“
Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.”
Mom: “One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.”
Me: “Please just let me watch America’s Next Top Model. It’s an activity.”
Mom: “Television is a passivity.”
Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.”
Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.”
Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.”
Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.”
Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.”
Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.”
Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.”
Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
Me: "If you want me to be a teenager, don't send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot."
Mom: "You don't take pot, for starters."
Me: "See, that's the kind of thing I'd know if you got me a fake ID.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. And when they spoke, they weren't just telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
Everyone doesn't have to do everything," she told me. "People forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support. I've had so much pleasure from beautiful and challenging things created by other people, things I could never make or do. I wouldn't trade that for anything.
”
”
Will Schwalbe (The End of Your Life Book Club)
“
When you look for these support groups, they all have vague upbeat names. My Thursday evening group for blood parasites, it's called Free and Clear.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
She wouldn’t have understood. Or worse, she would’ve pretended to understand, but then got annoyed when her support didn’t magically cure me.
”
”
Holly Bourne (Am I Normal Yet? (The Spinster Club, #1))
“
And there's something you can always tell people who want to learn more about the world and who don't know how to find a cause to support. You can always tell them to read.
”
”
Will Schwalbe (The End of Your Life Book Club)
“
CASHFLOW clubs are not for those who want to get rich quick. CASHFLOW clubs are there to support the long-term mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, and financial changes a person needs to go through. We all change and evolve at different rates of speed so you are encouraged to go at your own speed.
”
”
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad's CASHFLOW QUADRANT)
“
Grief isn’t something you fix; it’s something you honour. There’s no flash sale, weekend retreat or quickly found solution. We often dream of a comeback from grieving, when the healthiest thing we can do is aim to come-through, by waking up every day and honouring our relationship with loss and how we feel in each moment that follows.
”
”
Addison Brasil (First Year of Grief Club : A Gift From A Friend Who Gets It)
“
Fem-i-nist Fight Club / n. Your crew, your posse, your girl gang; your unconditionally helpful professional support system; your ride-or-die homies.
”
”
Jess Bennett (Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace)
“
I believe sometimes medical issues just happen--they're not cosmic tests; they're not retribution for all the naughty things you've done over a lifetime. It's not some moral righting of the universe. It's just something going wonky with the wiring...And I think God cries when we're in pain; he cries with us and he supports us. But I also believe he stands back and lets us sort things out. Lets the doctors do their work. Lets your body heal itslef.
”
”
Kate Jacobs (The Friday Night Knitting Club (Friday Night Knitting Club, #1))
“
The unlikely group that resulted from the union of five diverse characters in their late twenties operated with surprising harmony. This cohesiveness could be attributed to two factors: 1) everyone’s issues and embarrassing pasts were plainly disclosed prior to the gang’s formation and 2) the clan had been expressly conceived as a male support group.
”
”
Zack Love (Sex in the Title: A Comedy about Dating, Sex, and Romance in NYC (Back When Phones Weren't So Smart))
“
I think about the story of Job I heard in Carol Sharp's Sunday school. How he sort of learned to lean into feeling hurt at the end, the way you might lean into a heavy wind that almost winds up supporting you after a while.
”
”
Mary Karr (The Liars' Club)
“
Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen.
”
”
Sarah Addison Allen (The Peach Keeper)
“
If you want me to be a teenager, don't send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
THIS IS WHY I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
Really?” “Yes. Lord of the Flies is like some Christian support group compared to the mean girls’ club.
”
”
Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Moon)
“
(If I were a member of the class that rules, I would post men in all the neighborhoods of the nation, not to spy upon or club rebellious workers, not to break strikes or disrupt unions; but to ferret out those who no longer respond to the system in which they live. I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of these groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is biding its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.)
”
”
Richard Wright (Black Boy)
“
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Thousands of years ago tribes of human beings suffered great privations in the struggle to survive. In this struggle it was important not only to be able to handle a club, but also to possess the ability to think reasonably, to take care of the knowledge and experience garnered by the tribe, and to develop the links that would provide cooperation with other tribes. Today the entire human race is faced with a similar test. In infinite space many civilizations are bound to exist, among them civilizations that are also wiser and more "successful" than ours. I support the cosmological hypothesis which states that the development of the universe is repeated in its basic features an infinite number of times. In accordance with this, other civilizations, including more "successful" ones, should exist an infinite number of times on the "preceding" and the "following" pages of the Book of the Universe. Yet this should not minimize our sacred endeavors in this world of ours, where, like faint glimmers of light in the dark, we have emerged for a moment from the nothingness of dark unconsciousness of material existence. We must make good the demands of reason and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly perceive.
”
”
Andrei D. Sakharov
“
Wearing your red scarves, your Liverpool scarves. To support Liverpool Football Club. So I thank you, boys. I thank you. For supporting Liverpool Football Club. Because we could do nothing without you, boys –
We would be nothing without you.
”
”
David Peace (Red or Dead)
“
At almost every meeting since then, Big Bob has made me cry.
I never went back to the doctor. I never chewed the valerian root.
This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom. If I didn't say anything, people in a group assumed the worst. They cried harder, I cried harder. Look up into the stars and you're gone.
Walking home after a support group, I felt more alive than I'd ever felt. I wasn't host to cancer or blood parasites; I was the little warm center that the life of the world crowded around.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
We must understand that the local church isn’t a country club or a casual self-help group. It is God’s holy temple, a congregation of redeemed saints and priests who are consecrated to God. It is God’s lighthouse in a dark world. It is “the pillar and support of the truth.
”
”
Alexander Strauch (The New Testament Deacon: The Church's Minister of Mercy)
“
It’s that time of the month again…
As we head into those dog days of July, Mike would like to thank those who helped him get the toys he needs to enjoy his summer.
Thanks to you, he bought a new bass boat, which we don’t need; a condo in Florida, where we don’t spend any time; and a $2,000 set of golf clubs…which he had been using as an alibi to cover the fact that he has been remorselessly banging his secretary, Beebee, for the last six months.
Tragically, I didn’t suspect a thing. Right up until the moment Cherry Glick inadvertently delivered a lovely floral arrangement to our house, apparently intended to celebrate the anniversary of the first time Beebee provided Mike with her special brand of administrative support. Sadly, even after this damning evidence-and seeing Mike ram his tongue down Beebee’s throat-I didn’t quite grasp the depth of his deception. It took reading the contents of his secret e-mail account before I was convinced. I learned that cheap motel rooms have been christened. Office equipment has been sullied. And you should think twice before calling Mike’s work number during his lunch hour, because there’s a good chance that Beebee will be under his desk “assisting” him.
I must confess that I was disappointed by Mike’s over-wrought prose, but I now understand why he insisted that I write this newsletter every month. I would say this is a case of those who can write, do; and those who can’t do Taxes.
And since seeing is believing, I could have included a Hustler-ready pictorial layout of the photos of Mike’s work wife. However, I believe distributing these photos would be a felony. The camera work isn’t half-bad, though. It’s good to see that Mike has some skill in the bedroom, even if it’s just photography.
And what does Beebee have to say for herself? Not Much. In fact, attempts to interview her for this issue were met with spaced-out indifference. I’ve had a hard time not blaming the conniving, store-bought-cleavage-baring Oompa Loompa-skinned adulteress for her part in the destruction of my marriage. But considering what she’s getting, Beebee has my sympathies.
I blame Mike. I blame Mike for not honoring the vows he made to me. I blame Mike for not being strong enough to pass up the temptation of readily available extramarital sex. And I blame Mike for not being enough of a man to tell me he was having an affair, instead letting me find out via a misdirected floral delivery.
I hope you have enjoyed this new digital version of the Terwilliger and Associates Newsletter. Next month’s newsletter will not be written by me as I will be divorcing Mike’s cheating ass. As soon as I press send on this e-mail, I’m hiring Sammy “the Shark” Shackleton. I don’t know why they call him “the Shark” but I did hear about a case where Sammy got a woman her soon-to-be ex-husband’s house, his car, his boat and his manhood in a mayonnaise jar.
And one last thing, believe me when I say I will not be letting Mike off with “irreconcilable differences” in divorce court. Mike Terwilliger will own up to being the faithless, loveless, spineless, useless, dickless wonder he is.
”
”
Molly Harper (And One Last Thing ...)
“
No country is completely free of those who would prefer to keep people separate. Even in countries with the most homogenous of populations, there will always be some who feel compelled to condemn, envy, and attack others, whether for belonging to a different political party or merely for supporting a rival football club. But
”
”
Ayşe Kulin (Rose of Sarajevo)
“
He and my mother were very supportive. They knew I needed to follow my own path.
”
”
Sarah Morgan (The Book Club Hotel)
“
I'm not here to support you," Seungyeon would say, "If the club needs brightening up, get a lamp.
”
”
Cho Nam-Joo (82년생 김지영)
“
GRIEF IS NOT SOMETHING YOU FIX;
IT’S SOMETHING YOU HONOUR.
”
”
Addison Brasil (First Year of Grief Club : A Gift From A Friend Who Gets It)
“
Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
carrying on with the world’s most supportive people: unknown drunk girls at the club.
”
”
Aurelia Knight (Mind to Bend (Stolen Obsessions, #1))
“
There is no conclusive evidence to support that women are actually more emotional at work. But there is research to support that female emotion is perceived differently than men’s.
”
”
Jess Bennett (Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace)
“
You boys are the homosexual supporting cast
”
”
Tamaki Suoh
“
I began to realize that maybe my opinions just didn’t fit in with the liberal status quo, which seems to mean that you must absolutely hate Trump, his supporters and everything they believe. If you dare not to protest or boycott Trump, you are a traitor.
If you dare to question liberal stances or make an effort toward understanding why conservatives think the way they do, you are a traitor. It can seem like liberals are actually against free speech if it fails to conform with the way they think. And I don’t want to be a part of that club anymore.
”
”
Chadwick Moore
“
Listening to the debates about public schools on the Christian Right, one hears plenty of opposing opinions and a great deal of confusion. Some want to change the schools, others want to leave them. But the smart money seems to know what it is doing. It provides support for programs like the Good News Club, which slowly erode the support for public education in the country at large and in their own constituency in particular. And then it lays the groundwork for dismantling public education in favor of a private system of religious education funded by the state.
”
”
Katherine Stewart (The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America’s Children)
“
A nation's footballing style is reflected in various ways. It's not simply about the national side's characteristics, but about the approach of its dominant clubs, the nature of its star players and the philosophy of its coaches. It's about the experiences of a country's players when moving abroad, and about the success of its imports. It's about how referees officiate and what the supporters cheer.
”
”
Michael Cox (Zonal Marking: The Making of Modern European Football)
“
It's smart. It's what men do. Why do you think they join all those clubs —the Elks? The VFW? The Masons? Congress!" she cried. "To support one another, that's why. Why do you think they call them booster clubs? Because they're trying to boost each other over the wall or bend the rules in their favor, help the group.
If women stuck up for one another the way men do, this would be a very different world.
”
”
Marie Bostwick (The Book Club for Troublesome Women)
“
If I were a member of the class that rules, I would post men in all the neighborhoods of the nation, not to spy upon or club rebellious workers, not to break strikes or disrupt unions, but to ferret out those who no longer respond to the system in which they live. I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of these groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is biding its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.
”
”
Richard Wright (Black Boy)
“
I knew I should go low carb, but I have a loyalty problem. Carbs are my friends and have gotten me through some really tough times. I feel that I need to support them in this cruel, low–carb world we live in.
”
”
Katie Graykowski (Rest In Pieces (PTO Murder Club Mystery, #1))
“
Introductory paragraph incorporating the thesis: After a challenging childhood marked by adversity, Adam Parrish has become a successful freshman at Harvard University. In the past, he had spent his time doubting himself, fearing he would become like his father, obsessing that others could see his trailer-park roots, and idealizing wealth, but now he has built a new future where no one has to know where he's come from. Before becoming a self-actualized young man at Harvard, Adam had been deeply fascinated by the concept of the ley lines and also supernaturally entangled with one of the uncanny forests located along one, but he has now focused on the real world, using only the ghost of magic to fleece other students with parlor trick tarot card readings. He hasn't felt like himself for months, but he is going to be just fine.
Followed by three paragraphs with information that supports the thesis. First: Adam understands that suffering is often transient, even when it feels permanent. This too shall pass, etc. Although college seems like a lifetime, it is only four years. Four years is only a lifetime if one is a guinea pig.
Second paragraph, building on the first point: Magic has not always been good for Adam. During high school, he frequently immersed himself in it as a form of avoidance. Deep down, he fears that he is prone to it as his father is prone to abuse, and that it will eventually make him unsuitable for society. By depriving himself of magic, he forces himself to become someone valuable to the unmagic world, i.e. the Crying Club.
Third paragraph, with the most persuasive point: Harvard is a place Ronan Lynch cannot be, because he cannot survive there, either physically or socially. Without such hard barriers, Adam will surely continue to return to Ronan Lynch again and again, and thus fall back in with bad habits. He will never achieve the life of financial security and recognition he planned.
Thesis restated, bringing together all the information to prove it: Although life is unbearable now, and Adam Parrish seems to have lost everything important to him in the present by pursuing the things important to him in the past, he will be fine.
Concluding paragraph describing what the reader just learned and why it is important for them to have learned it: He will be fine. He will be fine. He will be fine. He will be fine.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Greywaren (Dreamer Trilogy, #3))
“
everyone doesn’t have to do everything.” she told me .”people forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support. i’ve had so much pleasure from beautiful things created by other people, things i could never make or do.
”
”
Will Schwalbe (The End of Your Life Book Club)
“
The club supporters’ old practice of shooting arrows into the air from their wands every time their Chasers scored was banned by the Department of Magical Games and Sports in 1894, when one of these weapons pierced the referee Nugent Potts through the nose.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Quidditch Through the Ages)
“
Everyone doesn't have to do everything... People forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support. I've had so much pleasure from beautiful and challenging things created by other people, things I could never made or do. I wouldn't trade that for anything.
”
”
Will Schwalbe (The End of Your Life Book Club)
“
Heidel and Klopp learned an important lesson in those weeks. Little old Mainz could only grow as a club if the supporters were on board. They had to feel truly involved, feel that they were an important part of Mainz’s success. ‘You have to get people onside at an emotional level,’ says Heidel.
”
”
Raphael Honigstein (Bring the Noise: The Jürgen Klopp Story)
“
[A] right,” he said there, “is only the hypostasis of a prophecy—the imagination of a substance supporting the fact that the public force will be brought to bear upon those who do things to contravene it—just as we talk of the force of gravitation accounting for the conduct of bodies in space.”17
”
”
Louis Menand (The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America)
“
Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has probably been more widely read—and more widely misinterpreted—than any other book in the recent philosophy of science. The broad circulation of his views has generated a popular caricature of Kuhn’s position. According to this popular caricature, scientists working in a field belong to a club. All club members are required to agree on main points of doctrine. Indeed, the price of admission is several years of graduate education, during which the chief dogmas are inculcated. The views of outsiders are ignored. Now I want to emphasize that this is a hopeless caricature, both of the practice of scientists and of Kuhn’s analysis of the practice. Nevertheless, the caricature has become commonly accepted as a faithful representation, thereby lending support to the Creationists’ claims that their views are arrogantly disregarded.
”
”
Philip Kitcher (Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism)
“
So, Diablos Rojos, what’s that stand for? I mean, in English, like?” “Red Devils. We the red devils, man.” “What the—? Are you a Manchester United supporters’ club or something?” “No.” “Well, I don’t want to add to your troubles, but I’m guessing they’ve trademarked that, and they are notoriously litigious.
”
”
Caimh McDonnell (I Have Sinned (McGarry Stateside, #2))
“
The common denominator in all placebo experiments is the presence of hopeful expectancy. Whether this arrives through moral support, credible encouragement, education, religious belief, anticipation of reward, or a combination, the arousal of expectancy is the catalyzing event. Belief is the fee of actualization.
”
”
Mitch Horowitz (The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality)
“
I think about the story of Job I heard in Carol Sharp’s Sunday school. How he sort of learned to lean into feeling hurt at the end, the way you might lean into a heavy wind that almost winds up supporting you after a while. People can get behind pain that way, if they think it derives from powers larger than themselves.
”
”
Mary Karr (The Liars' Club)
“
because of the effects of large dams on wildlife and watersheds, the Club does not support large-scale hydropower.”[40] Once again, we see that the “green energy” movement is not about energy—even cost-effective, non-CO2-emitting energy—it is about sacrificing energy and other human values to the idol of unimpacted nature.
”
”
Alex Epstein (Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less)
“
- Have you thought about joining any clubs on your college campus as a mean to build a support system for yourself? Engaging with others who identify as you do could help bring about a level of comfort that will enable you to speak freely."
Alice resisted the urge to sort. "Nah. I think those are great for some people, especially if you're the right color, not bi, and certainly not ace. So.
”
”
Claire Kann (Let's Talk About Love)
“
The AWU had polled its own members and he knew the men and women of the union overwhelmingly supported Howard blocking the Tampa. That election proved a life lesson for Shorten: he saw the power of wedge politics. At the Press Club a few months later, he called on unions to act as a conservative check on the rank and file. Unions represent 2 million workers and who, he asked, do Labor’s branches represent?
”
”
David Marr (Faction Man: Bill Shorten's Path to Power (Quarterly Essay #59))
“
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat. But the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little life-saving station grew.
Some of the members of the life-saving were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building.
Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it as sort of a club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The life-saving motif still prevailed in this club`s decoration, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.
About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and some had black skin and some had yellow skin. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up before coming inside.
At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club`s life-saving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon life-saving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. So they did just that.
As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another `spin-off` life saving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit the sea coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along the shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.
”
”
Ross Paterson (The Antioch Factor: The Hidden Message of the Book of Acts)
“
Like I told you, you are the way you are,' Dr. Eaton said. 'There's nothing wrong with that. Everybody needs help sometimes. You just needed help with this.' She could never hear those sentences enough. It's lonely, to not feel like others, to not experience their apparent ease or success. For the first time, Mariel felt ashamed that she'd tried to hide what she viewed as a deficiency. It was the shame that was isolating, not the need for support.
”
”
J. Ryan Stradal (Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club)
“
I thought of Joey and Nate. Had they been happy babies too or had they always been nervous and shy? I had a feeling I knew the answer. Their personalities probably had a lot to do with the environment they’d grown up in.
Mr. Nicholls was not exactly the sweet, loving, supportive type of parent I was used to, but I didn’t want to judge him. I knew he was probably raising his kids the way he believed was right. Every parent has different ideas about how to bring up good kids.
”
”
Ann M. Martin (Claudia and the Terrible Truth (The Baby-Sitters Club, #117))
“
We have not thoroughly assessed the bodies snatched from dirt and sand to be chained in a cell. We have not reckoned with the horrendous, violent mass kidnapping that we call the Middle Passage.
We have not been honest about all of America's complicity - about the wealth the South earned on the backs of the enslaved, or the wealth the North gained through the production of enslaved hands. We have not fully understood the status symbol that owning bodies offered. We have not confronted the humanity, the emotions, the heartbeats of the multiple generations who were born into slavery and died in it, who never tasted freedom on America's land.
The same goes for the Civil War. We have refused to honestly confront the fact that so many were willing to die in order to hold the freedom of others in their hands. We have refused to acknowledge slavery's role at all, preferring to boil things down to the far more palatable "state's rights." We have not confessed that the end of slavery was so bitterly resented, the rise of Jim Crow became inevitable - and with it, a belief in Black inferiority that lives on in hearts and minds today.
We have painted the hundred-year history of Jim Crow as little more than mean signage and the inconvenience that white people and Black people could not drink from the same fountain. But those signs weren't just "mean". They were perpetual reminders of the swift humiliation and brutal violence that could be suffered at any moment in the presence of whiteness. Jim Crow meant paying taxes for services one could not fully enjoy; working for meager wages; and owning nothing that couldn't be snatched away. For many black families, it meant never building wealth and never having legal recourse for injustice. The mob violence, the burned-down homes, the bombed churches and businesses, the Black bodies that were lynched every couple of days - Jim Crow was walking through life measuring every step.
Even our celebrations of the Civil Rights Movement are sanitized, its victories accentuated while the battles are whitewashed. We have not come to grips with the spitting and shouting, the pulling and tugging, the clubs, dogs, bombs, and guns, the passion and vitriol with which the rights of Black Americans were fought against. We have not acknowledged the bloodshed that often preceded victory. We would rather focus on the beautiful words of Martin Luther King Jr. than on the terror he and protesters endured at marches, boycotts, and from behind jail doors. We don't want to acknowledge that for decades, whiteness fought against every civil right Black Americans sought - from sitting at lunch counters and in integrated classrooms to the right to vote and have a say in how our country was run.
We like to pretend that all those white faces who carried protest signs and batons, who turned on their sprinklers and their fire hoses, who wrote against the demonstrations and preached against the changes, just disappeared. We like to pretend that they were won over, transformed, the moment King proclaimed, "I have a dream." We don't want to acknowledge that just as Black people who experienced Jim Crow are still alive, so are the white people who vehemently protected it - who drew red lines around Black neighborhoods and divested them of support given to average white citizens. We ignore that white people still avoid Black neighborhoods, still don't want their kids going to predominantly Black schools, still don't want to destroy segregation.
The moment Black Americans achieved freedom from enslavement, America could have put to death the idea of Black inferiority. But whiteness was not prepared to sober up from the drunkenness of power over another people group. Whiteness was not ready to give up the ability to control, humiliate, or do violence to any Black body in the vicinity - all without consequence.
”
”
Austin Channing Brown (I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness)
“
This life is hard. There is a lot going on in the world today that makes it even harder. And I believe that’s why now, more than ever, we need to be sounding boards for each other. Maybe that looks like joining or organizing a parents’ group, a support group, a church group, a book club, a walking club, a volunteer organization… Maybe that looks like inviting a friend who may be down and out for coffee and a vent session. My heart is for making connections with people, because as you’ve read in my stories, you never know how far one of those connections might take you.
”
”
Delilah . (One Heart at a Time)
“
Quand ils s'indignent de nos réunions féministes en non-mixité, ce qu'ils nous reprochent vraiment, c'est de nous regrouper en un corps politique où ils n'ont pas voix au chapitre. Ce n'est en effet pas tant qu'on se rassemble entre femmes qui les choque : quand ce sont des clubs de tricot, des associations de mères ou des réunions Tupperware, rien ne pourrait moins les intéresser. Ce qu'ils ne supportent pas, ce qui les effraie même, c'est qu'on s'organise, qu'on s'assemble et qu'on forme une masse politique d'où émergent des idées et des plans d'action. Et qu'on ne leur accorde aucune importance.
”
”
Pauline Harmange (Moi les hommes, je les déteste)
“
Living in 21st century civilisation entails a neo-Faustian bargain. In return for your ‘soul’ (or at least your fundamental authenticity, let’s say), you will receive extensive benefits. Immortality isn’t yet available but relative affluence, a well-distracted sense of amortality and longevity are clear benefits. Freud (1908/2001) understood the bargain involved in surrendering thus, repressing the depths of our instincts and giving huge status to the superego. Society will soothe your anxieties if you smile rather than frown, and always reply ‘Fine’ to the meaningless ‘How are you?’ An occasional, darkly leaky ‘Mustn’t grumble’ may be tolerated. Endorse the status quo, have children and don’t talk about suffering and death. Absolutely avoid ‘that odd shit’ spoken by weirdos like Rust Cohle (see Chapter 4). For the superior neo-Faustian package of enhanced benefits, help to boost capitalism with entrepreneurial projects; support (indeed be part of) religion, psychotherapy, the self-help industry and the rhetoric of well-being and flourishing; distance yourself from civilisation’s discontents, especially DRs; do not get visibly ill, old or die, or be very discreet or upbeat about it when it happens. If you ever consider defecting to the DR club, you may rapidly lose all benefits.
”
”
Colin Feltham (Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Explorations in Mental Health))
“
Fran, very brisk, fairly cheerful, still in her brocade dressing-gown but crouching over her desk, dashing off notes: suggestions to partisans in her various clubs, orders to the secretaries of the leagues which she supported-- leagues for the study of democracy, leagues for the blind, societies for the collection of statistics about the effect of alcohol on plantation-hands in Mississippi. She was interested in every aspect of these leagues except perhaps the purposes for which they had been founded, and no Indiana politician was craftier at soaping enemies, advising friends, and building up a political machine to accomplish nothing in particular.
”
”
Sinclair Lewis (Dodsworth)
“
Demanding yet denying the human condition makes for an explosive contradiction. And explode it does, as you and I know. And we live in an age of conflagration: it only needs the rising birth rate to worsen the food shortage, it only needs the newly born to fear living a little more than dying, and for the torrent of violence to sweep away all the barriers. In Algeria and Angola, Europeans are massacred on sight. This is the age of the boomerang, the third stage of violence: it flies right back at us, it strikes us and, once again, we have no idea what hit us. The "liberals" remain stunned: they admit we had not been polite enough to the "natives," that it would have been wiser and fairer to grant them certain rights, wherever possible; they would have been only too happy to admit them in batches without a sponsor to that exclusive club -- the human species; and now this barbaric explosion of madness is putting them in the same boat as the wretched colonists. The metropolitan Left is in a quandary: it is well aware of the true fate of the "natives," the pitiless oppression they are subjected to, and does not condemn their revolt, knowing that we did everything to provoke it. But even so, it thinks, there are limits: these guerrillas should make every effort to show some chivalry; this would be the best way of proving they are men. Sometimes the Left berates them: "You're going too far; we cannot support you any longer." They don't care a shit for its support; it can shove it up its ass for what it's worth. As soon as the war began, they realized the harsh truth: we are all equally as good as each other. We have all taken advantage of them, they have nothing to prove, they won't give anyone preferential treatment. A single duty, a single objective: drive out colonialism by every means. And the most liberal among us would be prepared to accept this, at a pinch, but they cannot help seeing in this trial of strength a perfectly inhuman method used by subhumans to claim for themselves a charter for humanity: let them acquire it as quickly as possible, but in order to merit it, let them use nonviolent methods. Our noble souls are racist.
”
”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“
values of commons-based sharing and of private enterprise often conflict, most notably over the extent to which innovations should be patent-protected. The commons crowd had its roots in the hacker ethic that emanated from the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club and the Homebrew Computer Club. Steve Wozniak was an exemplar. He went to Homebrew meetings to show off the computer circuit he built, and he handed out freely the schematics so that others could use and improve it. But his neighborhood pal Steve Jobs, who began accompanying him to the meetings, convinced him that they should quit sharing the invention and instead build and sell it. Thus Apple was born, and for the subsequent forty years it has been at the forefront of aggressively patenting and profiting from its innovations. The instincts of both Steves were useful in creating the digital age. Innovation is most vibrant in the realms where open-source systems compete with proprietary ones. Sometimes people advocate one of these modes of production over the others based on ideological sentiments. They prefer a greater government role, or exalt private enterprise, or romanticize peer sharing. In the 2012 election, President Barack Obama stirred up controversy by saying to people who owned businesses, “You didn’t build that.” His critics saw it as a denigration of the role of private enterprise. Obama’s point was that any business benefits from government and peer-based community support: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
“
An extensive biomedical literature has established that individuals are more likely to activate a stress response and are more at risk for a stress-sensitive disease if they (a) feel as if they have minimal control over stressors, (b) feel as if they have no predictive information about the duration and intensity of the stressor, (c) have few outlets for the frustration caused by the stressor, (d) interpret the stressor as evidence of circumstances worsening, and (e) lack social support-for the duress caused by the stressors. Psychosocial stressors are not evenly distributed across society. Just as the poor have a disproportionate share of physical stressors (hunger, manual labor, chronic sleep deprivation with a second job, the bad mattress that can't be replaced), they have a disproportionate share of psychosocial ones. Numbing assembly-line work and an occupational lifetime spent taking orders erode workers' sense of control. Unreliable cars that may not start in the morning and paychecks that may not last the month inflict unpredictability. Poverty rarely allows stress-relieving options such as health club memberships, costly but relaxing hobbies, or sabbaticals for rethinking one's priorities. And despite the heartwarming stereotype of the "poor but loving community," the working poor typically have less social support than the middle and upper classes, thanks to the extra jobs, the long commutes on public transit, and other burdens. Marmot has shown that regardless of SES, the less autonomy one has at work, the worse one's cardiovascular health. Furthermore, low control in the workplace accounts for about half the SES gradient in cardiovascular disease in his Whitehall population.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Transgression has been embraced as a virtue within Western social liberalism ever since the 60s, typically applied today as it is in bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress. So elevated has the virtue of transgression become in the criticism of art, argued Kieran Cashell, that contemporary art critics have been faced with a challenge: ‘either support transgression unconditionally or condemn the tendency and risk obsolescence amid suspicions of critical conservatism’ as the great art critic Robert Hughes often was. But, Cashell wrote, on the value placed upon transgression in contemporary art: ‘In the pursuit of the irrational, art has become negative, nasty and nihilistic.’ Literary critic Anthony Julius has also noted the resulting ‘unreflective contemporary endorsement of the transgressive’. Those who claim that the new right-wing sensibility online today is just more of the same old right, undeserving of attention or differentiation, are wrong. Although it is constantly changing, in this important early stage of its appeal, its ability to assume the aesthetics of counterculture, transgression and nonconformity tells us many things about the nature of its appeal and about the liberal establishment it defines itself against. It has more in common with the 1968 left’s slogan ‘It is forbidden to forbid!’ than it does with anything most recognize as part of any traditionalist right. Instead of interpreting it as part of other right-wing movements, conservative or libertarian, I would argue that the style being channelled by the Pepe meme-posting trolls and online transgressives follows a tradition that can be traced from the eighteenth-century writings of the Marquis de Sade, surviving through to the nineteenth-century Parisian avant-garde, the Surrealists, the rebel rejection of feminized conformity of post-war America and then to what film critics called 1990s ‘male rampage films’ like American Psycho and Fight Club.
”
”
Angela Nagle (Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right)
“
Pull in Friendships and Fresh Adventures: Five men are walking across the Golden Gate Bridge on an outing organized by their wives who are college friends. The women move ahead in animated conversation. One man describes the engineering involved in the bridge's long suspension. Another points to the changing tide lines below. A third asked if they've heard of the new phone apps for walking tours. The fourth observes how refreshing it is to talk with people who aren't lawyers like him.
Yes, we tend to notice the details that most relate to our work or our life experience.
It is also no surprise that we instinctively look for those who share our interests. This is especially true in times of increasing pressure and uncertainty. We have an understandable tendency in such times to seek out the familiar and comfortable as a buffer against the disruptive changes surrounding us. In so doing we can inadvertently put ourselves in a cage of similarity that narrows our peripheral vision of the world and our options. The result? We can be blindsided by events and trends coming at us from directions we did not see. The more we see reinforcing evidence that we are right in our beliefs the more rigid we become in defending them. Hint: If you are part of a large association, synagogue, civic group or special interest club, encourage the organization to support the creation of self-organized, special interest groups of no more than seven people, providing a few suggestions of they could operate. Such loosely affiliated small groups within a larger organization deepen a sense of belonging, help more people learn from diverse others and stay open to growing through that shared learning and collaboration. That's one way that members of Rick Warren's large Saddleback Church have maintained a close-knit feeling yet continue to grow in fresh ways. imilarly the innovative outdoor gear company Gore-Tex has nimbly grown by using their version of self-organized groups of 150 or less within the larger corporation. In fact, they give grants to those who further their learning about that philosophy when adapted to outdoor adventure, traveling in compact groups of "close friends who had mutual respect and trust for one another.
”
”
Kare Anderson (Mutuality Matters How You Can Create More Opportunity, Adventure & Friendship With Others)
“
Our team’s vision for the facility was a cross between a shooting range and a country club for special forces personnel. Clients would be able to schedule all manner of training courses in advance, and the gear and support personnel would be waiting when they arrived. There’d be seven shooting ranges with high gravel berms to cut down noise and absorb bullets, and we’d carve a grass airstrip, and have a special driving track to practice high-speed chases and real “defensive driving”—the stuff that happens when your convoy is ambushed. There would be a bunkhouse to sleep seventy. And nearby, the main headquarters would have the feel of a hunting lodge, with timber framing and high stone walls, with a large central fireplace where people could gather after a day on the ranges. This was the community I enjoyed; we never intended to send anyone oversees. This chunk of the Tar Heel State was my “Field of Dreams.” I bought thirty-one hundred acres—roughly five square miles of land, plenty of territory to catch even the most wayward bullets—for $900,000. We broke ground in June 1997, and immediately began learning about do-it-yourself entrepreneurship. That land was ugly: Logging the previous year had left a moonscape of tree stumps and tangled roots lorded over by mosquitoes and poisonous creatures. I killed a snake the first twelve times I went to the property. The heat was miserable. While a local construction company carved the shooting ranges and the lake, our small team installed the culverts and forged new roads and planted the Southern pine utility poles to support the electrical wiring. The basic site work was done in about ninety days—and then we had to figure out what to call the place. The leading contender, “Hampton Roads Tactical Shooting Center,” was professional, but pretty uptight. “Tidewater Institute for Tactical Shooting” had legs, but the acronym wouldn’t have helped us much. But then, as we slogged across the property and excavated ditches, an incessant charcoal mud covered our boots and machinery, and we watched as each new hole was swallowed by that relentless peat-stained black water. Blackwater, we agreed, was a name. Meanwhile, within days of being installed, the Southern pine poles had been slashed by massive black bears marking their territory, as the animals had done there since long before the Europeans settled the New World. We were part of this land now, and from that heritage we took our original logo: a bear paw surrounded by the stylized crosshairs of a rifle scope.
”
”
Anonymous
“
It’s my turn next, and I realize then that I never turned in the name of my escort--because I hadn’t planned on being here. I glance around wildly for Ryder, but he’s nowhere to be seen, swallowed up by the sea of people in cocktail dresses and suits.
Crap. I thought he realized that escorting me on court was part of the deal, once I’d agreed to go. I guess he’d figured it’d be easier on me, what with the whole Patrick thing, if I was alone onstage. But I don’t want to be alone. I want Ryder with me. By my side, supporting me.
Always.
I finally spot him in the crowd--it’s not too hard, since he’s a head taller than pretty much everyone else--and our eyes meet. My stomach drops to my feet--you know, that feeling you get on a roller coaster right after you crest that first hill and start plummeting toward the ground.
Oh my God, this can’t be happening. I’ve fallen in love with Ryder Marsden, the boy I’m supposed to hate. And it has nothing to do with his confession, his declaration that he loves me. Sure, it might have forced me to examine my feelings faster than I would have on my own, but it was there all along, taking root, growing, blossoming.
Heck, it’s a full-blown garden at this point.
“Our senior maid is Miss Jemma Cafferty!” comes the principal’s voice. “Jemma is a varsity cheerleader, a member of the Wheelettes social sorority, the French Honor Club, the National Honor Society, and the Peer Mentors. She’s escorted tonight by…ahem, sorry. I’m afraid there’s no escort, so we’ll just--”
“Ryder Marsden,” I call out as I make my way across the stage. “I’m escorted by Ryder Marsden.”
The collective gasp that follows my announcement is like something out of the movies. I swear, it’s just like that scene in Gone with the Wind where Rhett offers one hundred and fifty dollars in gold to dance with Scarlett, and she walks through the scandalized bystanders to take her place beside Rhett for the Virginia reel.
Only it’s the reverse. I’m standing here doing the scandalizing, and Ryder’s doing the walking.
“Apparently, Jemma’s escort is Ryder Marsden,” the principal ad-libs into the microphone, looking a little frazzled. “Ryder is…um…the starting quarterback for the varsity football team, and, um…in the National Honor Society and…” She trails off helplessly.
“A Peer Mentor,” he adds helpfully as he steps up beside me and takes my hand. The smile he flashes in my direction as Mrs. Crawford places the tiara on my head is dazzling--way more so than the tiara itself. My knees go a little weak, and I clutch him tightly as I wobble on my four-inch heels.
But here’s the thing: If the crowd is whispering about me, I don’t hear it. I’m aware only of Ryder beside me, my hand resting in the crook of his arm as he leads me to our spot on the stage beside the junior maid and her escort, where we wait for Morgan to be crowned queen.
Oh, there’ll be hell to pay tomorrow. I have no idea what we’re going to tell our parents. Right now I don’t even care. Just like Scarlett O’Hara, I’m going to enjoy myself tonight and worry about the rest later.
After all, tomorrow is another…Well, you know how the saying goes.
”
”
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
“
Late in the nineteenth century came the first signs of a “Politics in a New Key”: the creation of the first popular movements dedicated to reasserting the priority of the nation against all forms of internationalism or cosmopolitanism. The decade of the 1880s—with its simultaneous economic depression and broadened democratic practice—was a crucial threshold.
That decade confronted Europe and the world with nothing less than the first globalization crisis. In the 1880s new steamships made it possible to bring cheap wheat and meat to Europe, bankrupting family farms and aristocratic estates and sending a flood of rural refugees into the cities. At the same time, railroads knocked the bottom out of what was left of skilled artisanal labor by delivering cheap manufactured goods to every city. At the same ill-chosen moment, unprecedented numbers of immigrants arrived in western Europe—not only the familiar workers from Spain and Italy, but also culturally exotic Jews fleeing oppression in eastern Europe. These shocks form the backdrop to some developments in the 1880s that we can now perceive as the first gropings toward fascism.
The conservative French and German experiments with a manipulated manhood suffrage that I alluded to earlier were extended in the 1880s. The third British Reform Bill of 1884 nearly doubled the electorate to include almost all adult males. In all these countries, political elites found themselves in the 1880s forced to adapt to a shift in political culture that weakened the social deference that had long produced the almost automatic election of upper-class representatives to parliament, thereby opening the way to the entry of more modest social strata into politics: shopkeepers, country doctors and pharmacists, small-town lawyers—the “new layers” (nouvelles couches) famously summoned forth in 1874 by Léon Gambetta, soon to be himself, the son of an immigrant Italian grocer, the first French prime minister of modest origins.
Lacking personal fortunes, this new type of elected representative lived on their parliamentarians’ salary and became the first professional politicians. Lacking the hereditary name recognition of the “notables” who had dominated European parliaments up to then, the new politicians had to invent new kinds of support networks and new kinds of appeal. Some of them built political machines based upon middle-class social clubs, such as Freemasonry (as Gambetta’s Radical Party did in France); others, in both Germany and France, discovered the drawing power of anti-Semitism and nationalism.
Rising nationalism penetrated at the end of the nineteenth century even into the ranks of organized labor. I referred earlier in this chapter to the hostility between German-speaking and Czech-speaking wage earners in Bohemia, in what was then the Habsburg empire. By 1914 it was going to be possible to use nationalist sentiment to mobilize parts of the working class against other parts of it, and even more so after World War I.
For all these reasons, the economic crisis of the 1880s, as the first major depression to occur in the era of mass politics, rewarded demagoguery. Henceforth a decline in the standard of living would translate quickly into electoral defeats for incumbents and victories for political outsiders ready to appeal with summary slogans to angry voters.
”
”
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
“
They killed everyone in the camps. The whole world was dying there. Not only Jews. Even a black woman. Not gypsy. Not African. American like you, Mrs. Clara.
They said she was a dancer and could play any instrument. Said she could line up shoes from many countries and hop from one pair to the next, performing the dances of the world. They said the Queen of Denmark honored her with a gold trumpet. But she was there, in hell with the rest of us.
A woman like you. Many years ago. A lifetime ago. Young then as you would have been. And beautiful. As I believe you must have been, Mrs. Clara. Yes. Before America entered the war. Already camps had begun devouring people. All kinds of people. Yet she was rare. Only woman like her I saw until I came here, to this country, this city. And she saved my life.
Poor thing.
I was just a boy. Thirteen years old. The guards were beating me. I did not know why. Why? They didn't need a why. They just beat. And sometimes the beating ended in death because there was no reason to stop, just as there was no reason to begin. A boy. But I'd seen it many times. In the camp long enough to forget why I was alive, why anyone would want to live for long. They were hurting me, beating the life out of me but I was not surprised, expected no explanation. I remember curling up as I had seen a dog once cowering from the blows of a rolled newspaper. In the old country lifetimes ago. A boy in my village staring at a dog curled and rolling on its back in the dust outside a baker's shop and our baker in his white apron and tall white hat striking this mutt again and again. I didn't know what mischief this dog had done. I didn't understand why the fat man with flour on his apron was whipping it unmercifully. I simply saw it and hated the man, felt sorry for the animal, but already the child in me understood it could be no other way so I rolled and curled myself against the blows as I'd remembered the spotted dog in the dusty village street because that's the way it had to be.
Then a woman's voice in a language I did not comprehend reached me. A woman angry, screeching. I heard her before I saw her. She must have been screaming at them to stop. She must have decided it was better to risk dying than watch the guards pound a boy to death. First I heard her voice, then she rushed in, fell on me, wrapped herself around me. The guards shouted at her. One tried to snatch her away. She wouldn't let go of me and they began to beat her too. I heard the thud of clubs on her back, felt her shudder each time a blow was struck.
She fought to her feet, dragging me with her. Shielding me as we stumbled and slammed into a wall.
My head was buried in her smock. In the smell of her, the smell of dust, of blood. I was surprised how tiny she was, barely my size, but strong, very strong. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, squeezing, gripping hard enough to hurt me if I hadn't been past the point of feeling pain. Her hands were strong, her legs alive and warm, churning, churning as she pressed me against herself, into her. Somehow she'd pulled me up and back to the barracks wall, propping herself, supporting me, sheltering me. Then she screamed at them in this language I use now but did not know one word of then, cursing them, I'm sure, in her mother tongue, a stream of spit and sputtering sounds as if she could build a wall of words they could not cross.
The kapos hesitated, astounded by what she'd dared. Was this black one a madwoman, a witch? Then they tore me from her grasp, pushed me down and I crumpled there in the stinking mud of the compound. One more kick, a numbing, blinding smash that took my breath away. Blood flooded my eyes. I lost consciousness. Last I saw of her she was still fighting, slim, beautiful legs kicking at them as they dragged and punched her across the yard.
You say she was colored?
Yes. Yes. A dark angel who fell from the sky and saved me.
”
”
John Edgar Wideman (Fever)
“
Jazzie now has an OBE, and Trevor and Norman an MBE each, but their most vital legacy today is on the streets of London, among the next generation of sound systems, who automatically plugged into how it all worked from a British rather than Jamaican point of view. Most importantly, they could see how far it could go. The coming waves of London black music – latter-day ‘collectives’ like the So Solid Crew, Roll Deep and so on – benefited hugely from this template, using pirate radio, the internet, club nights and dances to operate as self-contained, self-supporting sound systems.
”
”
Lloyd Bradley (Sounds Like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital)
“
Identifying with success makes those doing the identifying seem successful themselves. The day United falter, many of these supporters will doubtless take their affiliation with them to Real Madrid or Barcelona or whoever it is that can provide them anew with a vicarious sense of worth.
”
”
Jim White (Manchester United: The Biography: The complete story of the world's greatest football club)
“
This concept of “Life is not supporting me”, is like “My breathing is not letting me breathe”! It is like, “My eyes show some parts as dark”. Arrey, even you recognizing some parts are dark is because your eyes are functioning! That is enough proof that your eyes are functioning! So, if you feel you want to be a billionaire, and you are denied entry into the Billionaires’ Club, and it is not happening, be informed, the very concept revealed to you that you can become billionaire is enough proof life is supporting you! Only when you understand the tons and tons of ways life is supporting you, you will also decide to say “YES” to life. As long as you think life is denying you what you want, life is keeping you away from what you want, you will also start saying “NO” to life.
”
”
Paramahamsa Nithyananda
“
We are a dedicated team of shaving enthusiasts committed to enhancing your grooming experience. Our mission is to provide you with top-quality shave cream products, valuable insights, and a supportive community that helps you achieve the perfect shave every time. Join us on this exciting journey and say goodbye to razor burns and irritation!
”
”
My Shaving Cream Club
“
It didn’t take long for other clubs to follow them across the pond. In 2005, Fulham accepted an invitation from Major League Soccer to play in the league’s annual All-Star Game. Chelsea made the trip the next year, and West Ham took its turn in 2008. If the matches themselves weren’t always thrilling spectacles, there was at least evidence that English clubs were treating them more seriously. West Ham’s supporters lent a sheen of authenticity to the whole thing when they engaged in a brawl with fans of the Columbus Crew, an unlikely outbreak of violence at a so-called friendly game that ended only when police administered pepper spray to both sets of fans. “We wanted to show people what we’re about,” West Ham manager Alan Curbishley remarked after the game.
”
”
Joshua Robinson (The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports)
“
Women’s enthusiasm for Shakespeare helped drive his rising status. In the 1730s a group of upper-class women calling themselves the Shakespeare Ladies Club started petitioning the theaters to stage more Shakespeare plays. Prologues at performances of the plays praised them as mothers responsible for Shakespeare’s rebirth, and the London Daily Advertiser ran a letter from Shakespeare’s ghost “to the Fair Supporters of Wit and Sense, the Ladies of Great Britain,” thanking the ladies for reviving “the Memory of the forsaken Shakespear.
”
”
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
“
Reputation laundering works because it’s assumed that the folks who support fine music would be less likely to commit heinous crimes than the human flotsam that frequent a honky-tonk or a techno club. Participating in the scrums and mosh pits at pop concerts must be less morally and psychologically uplifting than sitting stock-still in complete silence at the ballet.
”
”
David Byrne (How Music Works)
“
research also supports the idea that external order increases your discipline. That’s why Steve Jobs made sure the workplace at NeXT was minimalist and painted all-white when he was there. Mess lowers your self-control as well as steals your cognitive bandwidth.
”
”
Robin Sharma (The 5AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.)
“
In the physical world, you can randomize your vegetables by joining a Community-Supported Agriculture farm, which will deliver a box of produce to you every week. As we saw earlier, a CSA subscription does potentially pose a scheduling problem, but being sent fruits and vegetables you wouldn’t normally buy is a great way to get knocked out of a local maximum in your recipe rotation. Likewise, book-, wine-, and chocolate-of-the-month clubs are a way to get exposed to intellectual, oenophilic, and gustatory possibilities that you might never have encountered otherwise.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
While other London clubs in fancier neighborhoods—Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea—have all enjoyed long periods as the capital’s preeminent team with championships and trophies to their name, glory has always remained tantalizingly out of West Ham’s grasp. Not that their fans are unduly concerned; they embrace their status as the city’s gruff, blue-collar underdogs with a healthy slice of gallows humor. When Harry Redknapp, a former player at the club, went to inspect the club’s trophy cabinet after taking over as manager, “Lord Lucan, Shergar, and two Japanese prisoners of war fell out,” he wrote. Even the club’s anthem, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” is an old Broadway tune about shattered dreams and disappointment, and it’s bellowed by thousands of supporters wearing the team’s claret and blue jerseys before every game.
”
”
Joshua Robinson (The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports)
“
The Fremantle Football Club has needed me. But I have needed the Fremantle Football Club more - it owes me nothing at all. All the players and coaches who have represented the club, the staff, our sponsors and corporate supporters, our members and fans, and the families of the players - we have all endured. For me looking in the rear view mirror, it’s about celebrating us and our journey, not just one person.
”
”
Matthew Pavlich (Purple Heart)
“
The West Australian Football Commission (WAFC) got a second team but was not prepared to invest in that team because any investment would drain funds from other parts of the WA football system. The AFL also firmly wanted a second club in Perth to continue its growth as a truly national competition, but after seeing the Eagles play in three and win two of the five Grand Finals between 1990 and 1994, rival clubs were loathe to allow recruiting concessions that might create a second western juggernaut.
Hence, the Dockers were not well resourced and light on for talent, left to fend for themselves and somehow expected to make money from day one. By the time the AFL established new clubs on the Gold Coast and in western Sydney nearly 20 years later, they had learned from previous mistakes and invested in those clubs to give them the best chance of success. The support and concessions those clubs received were phenomenal compared to Fremantle’s.
”
”
Matthew Pavlich (Purple Heart)
“
I’d become friendly with Tom Courtenay on Doctor Zhivago. He was an English actor, based in London, and didn’t want the hassle of navigating Paris alone. To make things simple, he moved in with Omar Sharif and me in the Avenue Foch apartment provided by the production. With angular features and a conventionally English look, Tom was young, sensitive, and an avid supporter of Hull City football club. While shooting in Paris, he would dart back to England whenever he could to see them play. Once, upon returning to Paris, he discovered assorted pubic hairs in his bedsheets—telltale evidence that one of Omar’s sleepovers had made use of his room. Tom was enraged. He confronted Omar, and their relationship almost didn’t survive. Never in all my life have I seen someone so angry.
”
”
Carolyn Pfeiffer (Chasing the Panther: Adventures and Misadventures of a Cinematic Life)
“
Louise Honey(pot) is the pen name of a member of a writing club of (very, very) close friends who live in a major metropolitan area on the US Gulf Coast and who enthusiastically support each other's literary works.
”
”
Louise Honey
“
Purpose will lead you to
greater heights. Hence, you must
not undermine where you are right
now. Every step is critical, and
each moment will connect you with
people who will support you in
due time.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (Your Life, Your Purpose: 365 Motivational Quotes)
“
The binding reminded me of what I thought a marriage could be--joining yourself to a new family, and with their support, growing and blooming.
”
”
Louise Miller (The Late Bloomers' Club)
“
The only thing that bugs me is you thinking that my love and support for you has anything to do with masculinity. You think I care about how submissive you are to your partner? You think a real man can’t be submissive? Then I’ve failed you as a father, and that bugs me.
”
”
Sara Cate (Mercy (Salacious Players Club, #4))
“
If you seek to thrive, have a strong support network on your side. The kind that motivates you to improve your life.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
“
Sometimes, no one will support you in your endeavours, but if you have the zeal to keep moving forward and the determination to keep fighting for what you want, your dreams will eventually come alive.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
“
Sometimes, no one will support you in your endeavours, but if you have the zeal to keep moving forward, and the determination to keep fighting for what you want, your dreams will eventually come alive.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
“
Your purpose will always be
bigger than your pocket. You may
not have the funds to pursue it,
but purpose will open doors for
you. It will attract the required
resources and support needed to
fulfil it.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (Your Life, Your Purpose: 365 Motivational Quotes)
“
Your purpose will always be bigger than your pocket. You may not have the funds to pursue it, but purpose will open doors for you. It will attract the required resources and support needed to fulfil it.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (Your Life, Your Purpose: 365 Motivational Quotes)
“
Purpose will lead you to greater heights. Hence, you must not undermine where you are right now. Every step is critical, and each moment will connect you with people who will support you in due time.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (Your Life, Your Purpose: 365 Motivational Quotes)
“
Surround yourself with people who can pray for you, support you, guide you, and help you achieve your purpose.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (Your Life, Your Purpose: 365 Motivational Quotes)
“
Surround yourself with people
who can pray for you, support
you, guide you, and help you
achieve your purpose.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (Your Life, Your Purpose: 365 Motivational Quotes)
“
The one certainty we can derive from the new findings in placebo science is that the energies of the mind play a greater and more varied role in health than clinicians previously realized. The data stream allows us to document this phenomenon but not fully explain it. The common denominator in all placebo experiments is the presence of hopeful expectancy. Whether this arrives through moral support, credible encouragement, education, religious belief, anticipation of reward, or a combination, the arousal of expectancy is the catalyzing event. Belief is the fee of actualization.
”
”
Mitch Horowitz (The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality)
“
As America suffered from the Depression, Kansas City soared, thanks to the Ten-Year Plan. “In Kansas City,” said Conrad Mann, the president of the chamber of commerce, “we are building the greatest inland city the world has ever seen.” New skyscrapers sprouted from the ground every year, and jazz clubs rollicked into the morning, at a time when, as one agent put it, the rest of the country “couldn’t afford three dollars a night for a musician.” Pendergast liked to think generosity was at the core of his power. When a British parliamentarian named Marjorie Graves visited his Main Street office in 1933, he told her he helped “the poor through our organizations.” It was true that Tom’s Town was built on undervalued workers—immigrants, Black labor, the poor. “The Boss” hosted a fancy dinner for the needy every Christmas and kept quarters in his pockets for the homeless. By the early 1930s, with police brutality against the Black community on the rise, Pendergast seized control of the Kansas City Police Department, taking it back from the state of Missouri, which had assumed leadership in the Civil War era. Pendergast assigned staffing oversight to “Brother John” Lazia, the leader of the Fifth Democratic Ward and a charismatic crime boss, and when dozens more loyal Pendergast supporters were appointed to the force, The Kansas City Call reported that police brutality had declined. But Pendergast’s Ten-Year Plan funds rarely made it to Black communities, and the occasional gifts from his patronage system masked the need for lasting racial reforms.
”
”
Mark Dent (Kingdom Quarterback: Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs, and How a Once Swingin' Cow Town Chasedthe Ultimate Comeback)
“
How many Necromancers are out there?” “I don’t know,” he replied with a frown. “It’s not like we have a club. Although, I am surprised no one has started a support group by now.
”
”
Ashlyn Drewek (Malum Discordiae (Tennebrose, #1))
“
City Books in Hove appears in this book, but there are so many more I could have mentioned, and I’m sure I will do in future stories. Please support your local bookshops. “Use It or Lose It” is quite right.
”
”
Richard Osman (The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club, #2))
“
Everyone doesn’t have to do everything,” she told me. “People forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support. I’ve had so much pleasure from beautiful and challenging things created by other people, things I could never make or do. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
”
”
Will Schwalbe (The End of Your Life Book Club)
“
Geraldine in full on conductor mode as the Ass Club all screamed their lungs out in support of us. She had a baton and a white shirt with Vega Royals! scrawled across the front of it and was grinning her damn head off.
”
”
Caroline Peckham (The Reckoning (Zodiac Academy, #3))
“
►Do you have any expectations for billable hours/month? What happens if a trainer doesn’t hit them? ►How are you going to market me – and my skills? Are there other trainers who have similar skill sets and backgrounds? ►How many trainers do you currently have? How many hours do they typically work? ►How many trainers are you currently hiring? ►How long do most trainers stay at your club? What is the biggest reason they give for leaving? ►What programs do you have in place to keep your trainers for the long term? ►How do you monitor your trainers’ development? ►How do you monitor training sessions? ►Do you offer support for tasks like greeting clients, following up with clients, and rescheduling appointments? Or is that the trainer’s sole responsibility?
”
”
Jonathan Goodman (Ignite the Fire: The Secrets to Building a Successful Personal Training Career (Revised, Updated, and Expanded))