Surprise Visit Quotes

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality and my life, as I write this, is vital even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It's a precious discovery. Almost every day I feel momentary flashes of hopelessness and wonder every time whether I am slipping. For a petrifying instant here and there, a lightning-quick flash, I want a car to run me over...I hate these feelings but, but I know that they have driven me to look deeper at life, to find and cling to reasons for living, I cannot find it in me to regret entirely the course my life has taken. Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely, and sometimes against the moment's reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?

Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?

Nesta tried—tried and failed—not to feel the blow, the sting of the words. Though she didn’t know why she was surprised by it. There were no paintings of her in this house, they did not invite her to parties or dinners anymore, they certainly didn’t visit—

Trash can!” Pritkin cursed and grabbed one, just about the time everything I’d eaten that night paid a repeat visit. Whiskey, pizza, milk shake, beer-and a lone, half-dissolved gummy bear, which was a surprise, since I couldn’t actually recall having eaten any. Fun times.

Because that was the way surprises worked—they didn’t tend to pencil themselves in to your schedule and let you know they were visiting ahead of time.

Try leaving a friendly trail of little sparks of gratitude on your daily trips. You will be surprised how they will set small flames of friendship that will be rose beacons on your next visit.

You don't fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else’s orbit and after a while you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.) And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favourite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don’t want to be without. That’s it. PS You have to be brave.

She was suddenly roused by the sound of the door-bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once before called late in the evening, and might now come to inquire particularly after her. But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an inquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began: "In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

want you out of Velaris,” Feyre breathed, her voice shaking. Nesta tried—tried and failed—not to feel the blow, the sting of the words. Though she didn’t know why she was surprised by it. There were no paintings of her in this house, they did not invite her to parties or dinners anymore, they certainly didn’t visit— “And where,” Nesta asked, her voice mercifully icy, “am I supposed to go?” Feyre only looked to Cassian. And for once, the Illyrian warrior wasn’t grinning as he said, “You’re coming with me to the Illyrian Mountains.

The Doors The End This is the end, beautiful friend This is the end, my only friend The end of our elaborate plans The end of ev'rything that stands The end No safety or surprise The end I'll never look into your eyes again Can you picture what will be So limitless and free Desperately in need of some strangers hand In a desperate land Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain And all the children are insane All the children are insane Waiting for the summer rain There's danger on the edge of town Ride the king's highway Weird scenes inside the goldmine Ride the highway West baby Ride the snake Ride the snake To the lake To the lake The ancient lake baby The snake is long Seven miles Ride the snake He's old And his skin is cold The west is the best The west is the best Get here and we'll do the rest The blue bus is calling us The blue bus is calling us Driver, where you taking us? The killer awoke before dawn He put his boots on He took a face from the ancient gallery And he walked on down the hall He went into the room where his sister lived And then he paid a visit to his brother And then he walked on down the hall And he came to a door And he looked inside Father? Yes son I want to kill you Mother, I want to............. Come on, baby, take a chance with us Come on, baby, take a chance with us Come on, baby, take a chance with us And meet me at the back of the blue bus This is the end, beautiful friend This is the end, my only friend The end It hurts to set you free But you'll never follow me The end of laughter and soft lies The end of nights we tried to die This is the end

Hi, my name is Jareth, and I'll be your- God" He curses as he lays his eyes on me. I raised an eyebrow. "You'll be my god? Hm...Well, we'll have to see about that. I mean, it takes a lot to my world these days.

Fire         i   The morning you were made to leave she sat on the front steps, dress tucked between her thighs, a packet of Marlboro Lights near her bare feet, painting her nails until the polish curdled. Her mother phoned–   What do you mean he hit you? Your father hit me all the time but I never left him. He pays the bills and he comes home at night, what more do you want?   Later that night she picked the polish off with her front teeth until the bed you shared for seven years seemed speckled with glitter and blood.       ii   On the drive to the hotel, you remember “the funeral you went to as a little boy, double burial for a couple who burned to death in their bedroom. The wife had been visited by her husband’s lover, a young and beautiful woman who paraded her naked body in the couple’s kitchen, lifting her dress to expose breasts mottled with small fleshy marks, a back sucked and bruised, then dressed herself and walked out of the front door. The wife, waiting for her husband to come home, doused herself in lighter fluid. On his arrival she jumped on him, wrapping her legs around his torso. The husband, surprised at her sudden urge, carried his wife to the bedroom, where she straddled him on their bed, held his face against her chest and lit a match.       iii   A young man greets you in the elevator. He smiles like he has pennies hidden in his cheeks. You’re looking at his shoes when he says the rooms in this hotel are sweltering. Last night in bed I swear I thought my body was on fire.

She stretched out her hand, saying, “Vernon! My dear, what a delightful surprise!” “What’s surprising about it?” he enquired, lifting his black brows. “Didn’t you ask me to come?” The smile remained pinned to Lady Buxted’s lips, but she replied with more than a touch of acidity: “To be sure I did, but so many days ago that I supposed you had gone out of town!” “Oh, no!” he said, returning her smile with one of great sweetness.

In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.

What if I’d killed somebody?” “I wouldn’t be surprised, and I would visit you in prison if necessary.” She gasped, all feigned outrage. “You wouldn’t offer to help me hide the body?” Jacob’s lips quirked without permission. “You’ve been here quite a while Sunshine, and there’s no police sniffing around, so I imagine you hid it just fine yourself.

The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out ‘It’s a Small World After All,’ flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren

Please, scan your CRAB first before touching the key. For your own safety. From what, you ask? It’s a surprise. Enter without scanning if you want to find out. --Mee-Hae Ra

After school I drove to Patch’s. I did the safety conscious thing and circled the block a few times before parking in the freshly paved lot with extra wide parking spaces. I didn’t like feeling like I constantly had to watch my back, but I liked surprise visits from unfriendly Nephilim and devious archangels even less. And as far as the outside world knew, Patch and I were Splitsville. Using my key, I let myself inside.

Tell me something. Why is everyone so determined to believe Wilton is innocent?" Surprised, Davies said, "He's a war hero isn't he? Admired by the King and a friend of the Prince of Wales. He's visited Sandringham, been received by Queen Mary herself! A man like that doesn’t go around killing people!" With a wry downturn of his lips, Rutledge silently asked, How did he win his medals, you fool, if not by being so very damned good at killing?

A chiropractor is a doctor who performs adjustments on the spine," Rickey told the class before bending Gary backward and "adjusting" him, ripping off the false arm and spraying red hair dye all over the classroom. Gary howled in "pain" and collapsed dramatically on the threadbare school carpet, his legs flailing a bit before hitting the floor with a terrible, final-sounding thunk. That was the first time they were sent to the principal's office together. They had to apologize to their teacher and explain to their classmates that doctor visits were unlikely to result in surprise dismemberments.

And for an instant he would remember Naples: sitting with Sasha in her tiny room; the jolt of surprise and delight he'd felt when the sun finally dropped into the center of her window and was captured inside her circle of wire. Now he turned to her, grinning. Her hair and face were aflame with orange light. "See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. "It's mine.

Visiting Florence was like attending a surprise party every day.

See, I couldn’t control her. No matter how many times I called her, or screamed at her, or begged her to take me back, or made surprise visits to her place, or did other creepy and irrational ex-boyfriend things, I could never control her emotions or her actions. Ultimately, while she was to blame for how I felt, she was never responsible for how I felt. I was. At some point, after enough tears and alcohol, my thinking began to shift and I began to understand that although she had done something horrible to me and she could be blamed for that, it was now my own responsibility to make myself happy again. She was never going to pop up and fix things for me. I had to fix them for myself. When I took that approach, a few things happened. First, I began to improve myself. I started exercising and spending more time with my friends (whom I had been neglecting). I started deliberately meeting new people. I took a big study-abroad trip and did some volunteer work. And slowly, I started to feel better. I

Ruth once told me when I went to visit her at HMP Highpoint that it is surprising how much of what you imagine to be your innate sense of self actually comes from things that aren't one's self at all: people's reactions to the blouse you wear, the respectfulness of your family, the attentiveness of your friends, their approval of the pictures in your living room, the neatness of your lawn, the way people whisper your name. It is these exhibitions of yourself, as reflected in the people whom you meet, which give you comfort and your identity. Take them away, be put in a tiny room, and called by a number, and you begin to vanish.

'Yes. He was happy. He said, on that last visit, that some things were worth the wait. The world changes in unexpected ways, and all we can do is live in it and take joy in how it surprises us.'

It wouldn’t matter if you visited a million worlds. You never know everything about another person—not even someone you love. You can’t, and you wouldn’t want to.” To my surprise, Paul smiles, his expression as warm and adoring as it was that night in Chinatown. “You have to love the mystery. You have to take a chance.

The mother of Jesus, I sometimes remember, was visited by an angel and is seen as a saint; the mother of the Buddha died at his birth. Is it any surprise that Buddhism is about learning to live with loss, while Christianity is about salvation from above?

If you currently travel abroad or plan to in the future, make sure you understand the cultural convention of the country that you are visiting. Particularly with regard to greetings. If someone gives you a weak hand-shake, don't grimace. If anyone takes your arm, don't wince. If you are in the Middle East and a person wants to hold your hand, hold it. If you are a man visiting Russia, don't be surprised when your male host kisses your cheek, rather than hand. All of these greetings are as natural as way to express genuine sentiments as an American handshake. I am honored when an Arab or Asian man offers to take my hand because I know that it is a sign of high respect and trust. Accepting these cultural differences is the first step to better understanding and embracing diversity.

Surprise stimulates the brain, and research shows that people who do new things and visit new places—even something as modest as a trip to a new restaurant—tend to be happier.

To put it mildly, the International Space Station, until now, had never been the kind of place for surprise visits.

It is my fault". "You're right. It is". At that Jace looked up in absolute astonishment. Surprise at being agreed with battled with horror and relief in equal measures. "Is it?" "The harm is not deliberate, of course. But you are like me. We poison and destroy everything we love. There is a reason for that". "What reason?" Valentine glanced up at the sky. "We are meant for a higher purpose, you and I. The distractions of the world are just that, distractions. If we allow ourselves to be turned aside from our course by them, we are duly punished." "And our punishment is visited on everyone we care about? That seems a little hard on them." "Fate is never fair[...]

Now, it is our understanding that his Majesty Grom is requesting an unsealing from his mating with the Common Paca?” “That is correct,” Antonis says, rolling his eyes. “Poseidon’s beard, but this is repetitive.” Tandel ignores the elder king’s bluster. “It is also our understanding that Prince Galen requests, in exchange for his help, and the help of Emma the Half-Breed, that he is permitted to mate with Emma as if she were full-blooded Syrena.” “You have that correct,” Galen answers gruffly. Tandel pauses. “And do the Royals have any more requests at this time?” “Yes,” Emma says, to Galen’s surprise. She’s never held back from speaking what’s on her mind. But she never acknowledged herself as a Royal until now. “Because of my Half-breed status, and the fact that I’ve lived on land all my life, I would like for the Royals to be able to visit me here whenever they like. I know that under the current laws, that’s not allowed, but I want that changed.” “You might as well agree to that, Tandel,” Antonis says. “Or else you’ll be holding another tribunal for the Royals, because all of us intend to be visiting land more often I think.” “Actually I won’t be visiting land,” Galen says. He turns to Emma. “I’ll be living here.” Tears pool in her eyes. He catches one sliding down her cheek and kisses it away. Her reaction just confirms what he’d suspected all along. That she’s been worried about it. How it would work out between them, where would they live. Emma had said before that she wanted the best of both worlds. Prom, graduation, college. Swimming with dolphins, visiting the Titanic, searching for Amelia Earhart’s plane. He intends to make sure she has it all.

that I would give up my life readily if I found myself in war, or if my plane crashed into a desert. I would struggle tooth and nail to survive. It’s as though my life and I, having sat in opposition to each other, hating each other, wanting to escape each other, have now bonded forever and at the hip. The opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality, and my life, as I write this, is vital, even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It’s a precious discovery. Almost every day I feel momentary flashes of hopelessness and wonder every time whether I am slipping. For a petrifying instant here and there, a lightning-quick flash, I want a car to run me over and I have to grit my teeth to stay on the sidewalk until the light turns green; or I imagine how easily I might cut my wrists; or I taste hungrily the metal tip of a gun in my mouth; or I picture going to sleep and never waking up again. I hate those feelings, but I know that they have driven me to look deeper at life, to find and cling to reasons for living. I cannot find it in me to regret entirely the course my life has taken. Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely and sometimes against the moment’s reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?

If we find as many surprises as on visiting a house of plain exterior which inside is full of hidden treasures, torture-chambers, skeletons, when we discover the true lives of other people, the real beneath the apparent universe, we are no less surprised if, in place of the image that we have made of ourself with the help of all the things that people have said to us, we learn from the terms in which they speak of us in our absence what an entirely different image they have been carrying in their own minds of us and of our life

Q: How do you fall in love? You don't fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It's like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else's planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump... And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favorite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don't want to be without. That's it. PS You have to be brave.

A month ago she would have been embarrassed at the confidence. Now she felt a surprising kinship. She was a citizen of the new land, a country she had never before visited, only a rumor, this vast unseen tract, its boundary exactly that of the whole world, taking up the space and shape of the world but completely unlike it. It had a different atmosphere, hard to breathe, and how heavy you were here, it pulled you down like the gravity on Jupiter.

And an old priest said, Speak to us of Religion. And he said: Have I spoken this day of aught else? Is not religion all deeds and all reflection, And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom? Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations? Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself; This for my soul and this other for my body"? All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self. He who wears his mortality but as his best garment were better naked. The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin. And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage. The freest song comes not through bars and wires. And he to whom worshiping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn. Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all. Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute, The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight. For in reverie you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures. And take with you all men: For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair. And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

Margaret and James Shineman, newlyweds from Oil City, Wyoming, who suddenly found themselves aboard the fastest, most luxurious ship in service, for their journey to Scotland to visit Margaret’s family. The visit was to be a surprise. Both were killed.

You can visit me, you know. And I’m sure I’ll come back here all the time.” “No, you won’t.” Nessa shakes her head with surprising seriousness. “When you really fall in love . . . that person becomes your world. You’ll come back sometimes. But mostly you’ll want to be with Raylan.

It had surprised and impressed Tessia to learn that Everran and Avaria owned two wagons, one for their own everyday use and one kept for visits to the Royal Palace. Since the journey to the palace consisted of half the length of two streets, it seemed frivolous to own a vehicle especially for it.

In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can’t be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.

Lighten up" (don't) turn prayer into a work but listen for God and let oneself be surprised. Overly rigid adherence to a spiritual direction built around formal liturgical adherence and highly structured prayer time can work against the sanctification of the ordinary. Christ is effectively imprisoned, to be visited at stated times and otherwise ignored".

After the meal, Borman dropped me off at my hotel, then went to visit his wife at the nursing home where she lives. As he drove away, it seemed to me strange—I felt I’d come to know Susan as well as I had Frank, despite having met her for just a few minutes, despite the fact that she had been too ill to speak. When I returned home and transcribed the tapes of my interviews, I understood why. Borman spoke of Susan constantly; there didn’t seem an aspect of his life he could explain without discussing how much she meant to him or how much he loved her. I’d heard the same from Lovell and Anders about their wives. When I discovered that Apollo 8 was the only crew in which all the marriages survived (astronaut careers were notoriously hard on marriages) it didn’t surprise me. In a singularly beautiful story, it seemed only fitting that the first men to leave Earth considered home to be the most important place in the universe.

You've been hiding yourself, and you're good at it. A master of camouflage." She laughed. "Camouflage?" "That's the only possible explanation. You've made a frock from the same silk covering the drawing room walls, trimmed it with cat hair and feathers. Then when gentlemen visit, you stand still and blend in." "You have a surprisingly vivid imagination." "What I have is experience." He stopped in the road and turned to face her. "I've built a fortune by spotting things that are undervalued, dusting them off, and selling them at the proper price. I know a hidden treasure when I see one.

I’m not sure I ever met an American teacher in Korea that hadn’t volunteered at an orphanage at least once—even our resident idiot could be surprisingly decent on occasion—but I’ve also visited foreign countries where children are taught hatred. I’ve seen it up close and personal. It’s antithetical to everything I believe in as a teacher. The mandate for all teachers is to instill hope, not fear and hatred.

The more hurt I felt, the more I blamed the Lord for my pain. As my anger reached an irrational level, I hit one of the lowest points in my life. All of the waiting, disappointment, frustration, faith, hope, prayer, begging, pleading, doctors' visits, and medication seemed futile. God seemed so very far away. Finally I had it out with God in a yelling, stomping, fist-shaking, tearful fit unlike any I had ever dared before. As a "good Christian" I had never fully admitted to Him, or to myself, just how angry I really was. But He had known the true nature of my heart all along. I couldn't shock or surprise Him with my temper tantrum. He was big enough to handle all my rage. By confronting Him, I admitted to both of us exactly how I perceived our relationship. But this didn't drive Him further away; He drew me close. Honesty

Fidel Castro disclosed that he was reading Churchill’s World War II memoirs. “If Churchill hadn’t done what he did to defeat the Nazis, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here,” he told a crowd that had gathered to see the new Cuban leader when he visited a Havana bookstore. “What is more, we have to take a special interest in him because he, too, led a little island against a great enemy.” Another surprising fan

The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding, even if, as Proust warns is, 'when we discover the true lives of other people, the real world beneath the world of appearance, we get as many surprises as on visiting a house of plain exterior which is full of hidden treasures, torture-chambers or skeletons.

first time Calypso came to check on him, it was to complain about the noise. “Smoke and fire,” she said. “Clanging on metal all day long. You’re scaring away the birds!” “Oh, no, not the birds!” Leo grumbled. “What do you hope to accomplish?” He glanced up and almost smashed his thumb with his hammer. He’d been staring at metal and fire so long he’d forgotten how beautiful Calypso was. Annoyingly beautiful. She stood there with the sunlight in her hair, her white skirt fluttering around her legs, a basket of grapes and fresh-baked bread tucked under one arm. Leo tried to ignore his rumbling stomach. “I’m hoping to get off this island,” he said. “That is what you want, right?” Calypso scowled. She set the basket near his bedroll. “You haven’t eaten in two days. Take a break and eat.” “Two days?” Leo hadn’t even noticed, which surprised him, since he liked food. He was even more surprised that Calypso had noticed. “Thanks,” he muttered. “I’ll, uh, try to hammer more quietly.” “Huh.” She sounded unimpressed. After that, she didn’t complain about the noise or the smoke. The next time she visited, Leo was putting the final touches on his first project. He didn’t see her until she spoke right behind him. “I brought you—” Leo jumped, dropping his wires. “Bronze bulls, girl! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” She was wearing red today—Leo’s favorite color. That was completely irrelevant. She looked really good in red. Also irrelevant. “I wasn’t sneaking,” she said. “I was bringing you these.

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality and my life, as I write this, is vital even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It's a precious discovery.

Why didn't you tell me?" "I know you won't believe it, but I thought it would be best for you. You were doing so well until I came back. I thought you could go back to how it was. You still can." "Don't say that,Becks.We're going to figure something out." "I know.Even so,I understand that it would've been easier for you if I'd never come back.Maybe you and Jules..." His grip on my arm tightened,and when he spoke,his voice wavered. "Becks. I crashed when you left.Jules held together the pieces,and I will love her forever for that.But if I was with her, it wouldn't be right." He grimaced. "She told me so herself, right before I left with Will. She knew." Jack pushed my hair out of my eyes and off my forehead. "Um,she knew what?" I could barely hear my own voice. "It's always been you,Becks. Nothing will change that,no matter how much time has passed." He glanced down. "No matter if you feel the same way or not. You know what,right?" I shook my head slowly,wanting desperately to believe him, but not sure if I could. "How can you not see that? Everyone sees it." He slid his hand down my arm and grabbed my fingers, holding them in his lip,tracing them. Staring at them. "Remember freshman year? How Bozeman asked you to the Spring Fling?" Bozeman. He was two years older than me. Played offensive lineman. His first name was Zachary, but nobody had called him that since the third grade. I'd been surprised he even knew my name, let alone asked me to the dance. "Of course I remember.You came with me to answer him." We doorbell-ditched Bozeman's house, leaving a two-liter bottle of Coke and a note that said I'd pop to go to the dance with you, or something like that. Bozeman had a reputation for fast hands, but he didn't try anything with me. In fact,he barely touched me at all, even at the fling.And he never asked me out again.Or even talked to me, really.It was weird. "Yeah,well,I didn't tell you, but Bozeman actually asked my permission." "Why?" "Because it was obvious to everyone, except you,how I felt about you.And then that night with the Coke on the porch...after I dropped you off at home, I paid Bozeman a visit." His cheeks went pink and he lowered his eyes. "And?" "Let's just say I rescinded my permission. I didn't realize how much it would bother me." His eyes met mine. I could only imagine what was said between Jack and the lineman, who was twice his size. "Don't be mad," Jack said. Like I'd be angry after everything we'd been through. "I...I'm telling you this because you have to know that it's always been you. And it will always be you.

Ah, but thinking became morbid, sentimental, directly one began conjuring up doctors, dead bodies; a little glow of pleasure, a sort of lust, too, over the visual impression warned one not to go on with that sort of thing any more - fatal to art, fatal to friendship. True. And yet, thought Peter Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner, though the light high bell could be heard down the next street and still farther as it crossed the Tottenham Court Road, chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses. One might weep if no one saw. It had been his undoing - this susceptibility - in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time, or laughing either. I have that in me, he thought, standing by the pillar box, which could now dissolve in tears. Why heaven knows. Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of the day, which, beginning with that visit to Clarissa, had exhausted him with its heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip of one impression after another down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one would ever know. Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviolable, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and corners, surprising, yes; really it took one's breath away, these moments; there coming to him by the pillar-box opposite the British Museum one of them, a moment, in which things came together; this ambulance; and life and death.

But the Esquire passage I found most poignant and revealing was this one: Mister Rogers' visit to a teenage boy severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and terrible anger. One of the boys' few consolations in life, Junod wrote, was watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood. 'At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, 'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?' And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck... because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know how to do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him, too. As for Mister Rogers himself... he doesn't look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact, when Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him on being smart - for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself - and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. 'Oh heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.

Contemporary attitudes toward urban parks fall into three levels of sophistication. The first, the most naive assumption, is that parks are just plots of land preserved in their original state. If asked to discuss the issue at all, many laymen have maintained this much, that parks are bits of nature created only in the sense that some decision was made not to build on the land. Many are surprised to learn that parks that an artifact conceived and deliberated as carefully as public buildings, with both physical shape and social usage taken into account. The second, a little more informed, is that parks are aesthetic objects and that their history can be understood in terms of an evolution of artistic styles independent of societal considerations. The third is the view that each of the elements of the urban park represents part of planners' strategy for moral and social reform, so that today, as in the past, the citizen visiting a park is subject to an accumulated set of intended moral lessons.

Then someone knocks on the door, very clearly, four times. I pull away from Lena quickly. "What's that?" I say, dragging my forearm across my eyes, trying to get control of myself. Lena tries to pass it off as though she hadn't heard. Her face has gone white, her eyes wide and terrified. When the knocking starts up again, she doesn't move, just stays frozen where she is. "I thought nobody comes in this way." I cross my arms, watching Lena narrowly. There's a suspicious needling, pricking at some corner of my mind, but I can't quite focus on it. "They don't. I mean—sometimes—I mean, the delivery guys—" As she stammers excuses, the door opens, and he pokes his head in—the boy from the day Lena and I jumped the gate at the lab complex, just after we had our evaluations. His eyes land on me and he, too, freezes. At first I think there must be a mistake. He must have knocked on the wrong door. Lena will yell at him now, tell him to clear off. But then my mind grinds slowly into gear and I realize that no, he has just called Lena's name. This was obviously planned.

The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash. I spent two years traveling the country to write a book on the Christian Right called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. I visited former manufacturing towns where for many the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. They have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working classes into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of the demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian Right who offer a belief in magic, miracles, and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. And unless we rapidly re-enfranchise our dispossessed workers into the economy, unless we give them hope, our democracy is doomed.

Abraham Lincoln, who was about to meet some visiting clergy to accept a petition, was shining his shoes when a cabinet minister came into his office for a quick answer to a question. The cabinet secretary asked in surprise, “Mr. President, are you shining your own shoes?” “Whose shoes would I shine?” replied Lincoln dryly.

Getting old is the second-biggest surprise of my life, but the first, by a mile, is our unceasing need for deep attachment and intimate love. We oldies yearn daily and hourly for conversation and a renewed domesticity, for company at the movies or while visiting a museum, for someone close by in the car when coming home at night.

Bucket had started his criminal career in Braas, not far from when Allan and his new friends now found themselves. There he had gotten together with some like-minded peers and started the motorcycle club called The Violence. Bucket was the leader; he decided which newsstand was to be robbed of cigarettes next. He was the one who has chosen the name- The Violence, in English, not swedish. And he was the one who unfortunately asked his girlfriend Isabella to sew the name of the motorcycle club onto ten newly stolen leather jackets. Isabella had never really learned to spell properly at school, not in Swedish, and certainly not in English. The result was that Isabella sewed The Violins on the jackets instead. As the rest of the club members had had similar academic success, nobody in the group noticed the mistake. So everyone was very surprised when one day a letter arrived for The Violins in Braas from the people in charge of the concert hall in Vaxjo. The letter suggested that, since the club obviously concerned itself with classical music, they might like to put in am appearance at a concert with the city’s prestigious chamber orchestra, Musica Viate. Bucket felt provoked; somebody was clearly making fun of him. One night he skipped the newsstand, and instead went into Vaxjo to throw a brick through the glass door of the concert hall. This was intended to teach the people responsible lesson in respect. It all went well, except that Bucket’s leather glove happened to follow the stone into the lobby. Since the alarm went off immediately, Bucket felt it would be unwise to try to retrieve the personal item in question. Losing the glove was not good. Bucket had traveled to Vaxjo by motorbike and one hand was extremely cold all the way home to Braas that night. Even worse was the fact that Bucket’s luckless girlfriend had written Bucket’s name and adress inside the glove, in case he lost it." For more quotes from the novel visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com

That day, watching that episode with Rylee, I said to her, “That is what I need. Drugs.” And, much to my surprise, she responded, “Oh, well I have some right here.” Apparently, her then-boyfriend had asked to leave a little unopened vial of pot behind with her after visiting one weekend, because he was taking an airplane back home and couldn’t fly with it. For five minutes I chastised her for temporarily allowing illicit substances in our home, sullying our apartment’s good name. But then she said to me, “I think what we need to do, for you to feel better, is to get high and play Dream Phone.” And there wasn’t really much to think about, right then. I told her, “That is a really good idea.

An American tourist went to Cairo to visit the famous Polish rabbi Hafez Ayim. The tourist was surprised to see that the rabbi lived in a simple, book-lined room, in which the only pieces of furniture were a table and a bench. ‘Rabbi, where’s all your furniture?’ asked the tourist. ‘Why, where’s yours?’ retorted Hafez. ‘Mine? But I’m just passing through.’ ‘So am I,’ said the rabbi.

My visit to Her Highness was an agreeable surprise for me. Instead of being ushered into the presence of an over-decorated woman, sporting diamond pendants and necklaces, I found myself in the presence of a modest young woman who relied not upon jewels or gaudy dress for beauty but on her own naturally well formed features and exactness of manners. Her room was as plainly furnished as she was plainly dressed. Her severe simplicity became an object of my envy. She seemed to me an object lesson for many a prince and many a millionaire whose loud ornamentation, ugly looking diamonds, rings and studs and still more loud and almost vulgar furniture offend the taste and present a terrible and sad contrast between them and the masses from whom they derive their wealth.

The activists also had instructions to return, to surprise people in order to catch them unaware and with their food unguarded. In many places the brigades came more than once. Families were searched, and then searched again to make sure that nothing remained. “They came three times,” one woman remembered, “until there was nothing left. Then they stopped coming.”17 Brigades sometimes arrived at different times of day or night, determined to catch whoever had food red-handed.18 If it happened that a family was eating a meagre dinner, the activists sometimes took bread off the table.19 If it happened that soup was cooking, they pulled it off the stove and tossed out the contents. Then they demanded to know how it was possible the family still had something to put in the soup.20 People who seemed able to eat were searched with special vigour; those who weren’t starving were by definition suspicious. One survivor remembered that her family had once managed to get hold of some flour and used it to bake bread during the night. Their home was instantly visited by a brigade that had detected the noise and sounds of cooking in the house. They entered by force and grabbed the bread directly out of the oven.21 Another survivor described how the brigade “watched chimneys from a hill: when they saw smoke, they went to that house and took whatever was being cooked.”22 Yet another family received a parcel from a relative containing rice, sugar, millet and shoes. A few hours later a brigade arrived and took everything except the shoes.

Her concerned gaze skimmed over him. "Are you able to move much?" Now we're talking. "The hips work just fine, honey. Course, it'd probably be easier if you did all the-- hey, c'mon now, Luna, I was just teasing." He barely managed to hold in his laugh. "Don't storm away." She pivoted on her heel and stomped back toward him. Joe braced himself, waiting for the blast of her ire. She surprised him by drawing a deep breath, then another. And one more. He sighed. She was such a volatile, passionate woman, which made tweaking her temper fun. He raised a brow. "Got control of yourself?" She gave a sharp nod. The little liar. She wanted to bludgeon him. "Good." He patted the side of the bed next to his hip. "So tell me about this 'needing me' stuff. I'm all ears.

Perhaps it's time to name the Unnamed God, even feebly and in our own wicked image, that we may at least survive under the illusion of an authority that could care for us. For whittle away from the Unnamed God anything approximating character, and what have you got? A big hollow wind. And wind may have gale force but it may not have moral force; and a voice in a whirlwind is a carnival barker's trick. More appealing - she no saw, for once - the old-timers' notions of paganism. Lurlina in her fairy chariot, hovering just out of sight in the clouds, ready to swoop down some millennium or other and remember who we are. The Unnamed God, by virtue of its anonymity, can't ever be suspected of a surprise visit. And would we recognize the Unnamed God if it knocked on our doors?

SOCIAL/GENERAL ICEBREAKERS 1. What do you think of the movie/restaurant/party? 2. Tell me about the best vacation you’ve ever taken. 3. What’s your favorite thing to do on a rainy day? 4. If you could replay any moment in your life, what would it be? 5. What one thing would you really like to own? Why? 6. Tell me about one of your favorite relatives. 7. What was it like in the town where you grew up? 8. What would you like to come back as in your next life? 9. Tell me about your kids. 10. What do you think is the perfect age? Why? 11. What is a typical day like for you? 12. Of all the places you’ve lived, tell me about the one you like the best. 13. What’s your favorite holiday? What do you enjoy about it? 14. What are some of your family traditions that you particularly enjoy? 15. Tell me about the first car you ever bought. 16. How has the Internet affected your life? 17. Who were your idols as a kid? Have they changed? 18. Describe a memorable teacher you had. 19. Tell me about a movie/book you’ve seen or read more than once. 20. What’s your favorite restaurant? Why? 21. Tell me why you were named ______. What is the origin of your last name? 22. Tell me about a place you’ve visited that you hope never to return to. get over your mom’s good intentions. 23. What’s the best surprise you’ve ever received? 24. What’s the neatest surprise you’ve ever planned and pulled off for someone else? 25. Skiing here is always challenging. What are some of your favorite places to ski? 26. Who would star as you in a movie about your life? Why that person? 27. Who is the most famous person you’ve met? 28. Tell me about some of your New Year’s resolutions. 29. What’s the most antiestablishment thing you’ve ever done? 30. Describe a costume that you wore to a party. 31. Tell me about a political position you’d like to hold. 32. What song reminds you of an incident in your life? 33. What’s the most memorable meal you’ve eaten? 34. What’s the most unforgettable coincidence you’ve experienced or heard about? 35. How are you able to tell if that melon is ripe? 36. What motion picture star would you like to interview? Why? 37. Tell me about your family. 38. What aroma brings forth a special memory? 39. Describe the scariest person you ever met. 40. What’s your favorite thing to do alone? 41. Tell me about a childhood friend who used to get you in trouble. 42. Tell me about a time when you had too much to eat or drink. 43. Describe your first away-from-home living quarters or experience. 44. Tell me about a time that you lost a job. 45. Share a memory of one of your grandparents. 46. Describe an embarrassing moment you’ve had. 47. Tell me something most people would never guess about you. 48. What would you do if you won a million dollars? 49. Describe your ideal weather and why. 50. How did you learn to ski/hang drywall/play piano?

A story is told of one of the most revered abbots of fourth-century Egypt, Pachomius the Great, who refused to see his sister Maria when she came to visit him. The explanation was his own urgent need to avoid someone who might entangle him in the bonds of family feeling, and he was even praised for his self-control in being able to forgo the pleasure of her visit. It is not surprising that women sometimes found the self-involvement of male ascetics irritating.

Through books we can time travel, play make-believe and even create our own intangible art using the words to paint complex and vivid images in our minds. Your own interpretations of what’s on a page, like snowflakes or fingerprints, will never be the same as someone else’s. And to me, that’s the magic that books hold: Preserved in dried ink, on flattened paper, between two covers, that make up the endless world of possibilities lost in a page of carefully curated characters The unread books that have been staring you in the face for the past five years that you swear you could have read, or books that took you years to read that evolved along with your life; those that were bought for you as gifts or those that you bought yourself as a treat after a testing semester at school. The books that remind you of someone you loved, the books you forgot to return to a friend, or the coffee table books you will likely never read, and be pleasantly surprised by their pages when they are opened for the first time by a visiting friend.

ultimately, most of us would choose a rich and meaningful life over an empty, happy one, if such a thing is even possible. “Misery serves a purpose,” says psychologist David Myers. He’s right. Misery alerts us to dangers. It’s what spurs our imagination. As Iceland proves, misery has its own tasty appeal. A headline on the BBC’s website caught my eye the other day. It read: “Dirt Exposure Boosts Happiness.” Researchers at Bristol University in Britain treated lung-cancer patients with “friendly” bacteria found in soil, otherwise known as dirt. The patients reported feeling happier and had an improved quality of life. The research, while far from conclusive, points to an essential truth: We thrive on messiness. “The good life . . . cannot be mere indulgence. It must contain a measure of grit and truth,” observed geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan is the great unheralded geographer of our time and a man whose writing has accompanied me throughout my journeys. He called one chapter of his autobiography “Salvation by Geography.” The title is tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly, for geography can be our salvation. We are shaped by our environment and, if you take this Taoist belief one step further, you might say we are our environment. Out there. In here. No difference. Viewed that way, life seems a lot less lonely. The word “utopia” has two meanings. It means both “good place” and “nowhere.” That’s the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn’t want to live in the perfect place, either. “A lifetime of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on Earth,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman. Ruut Veenhoven, keeper of the database, got it right when he said: “Happiness requires livable conditions, but not paradise.” We humans are imminently adaptable. We survived an Ice Age. We can survive anything. We find happiness in a variety of places and, as the residents of frumpy Slough demonstrated, places can change. Any atlas of bliss must be etched in pencil. My passport is tucked into my desk drawer again. I am relearning the pleasures of home. The simple joys of waking up in the same bed each morning. The pleasant realization that familiarity breeds contentment and not only contempt. Every now and then, though, my travels resurface and in unexpected ways. My iPod crashed the other day. I lost my entire music collection, nearly two thousand songs. In the past, I would have gone through the roof with rage. This time, though, my anger dissipated like a summer thunderstorm and, to my surprise, I found the Thai words mai pen lai on my lips. Never mind. Let it go. I am more aware of the corrosive nature of envy and try my best to squelch it before it grows. I don’t take my failures quite so hard anymore. I see beauty in a dark winter sky. I can recognize a genuine smile from twenty yards. I have a newfound appreciation for fresh fruits and vegetables. Of all the places I visited, of all the people I met, one keeps coming back to me again and again: Karma Ura,

Discreet as you are, Rohan, one can’t help but notice how ardently you are pursued. It seems you hold quite an appeal for the ladies of London. And from all appearances, you’ve taken full advantage of what’s been offered.” Cam stared at him without expression. “Pardon, but are you leading to an actual point, my lord?” Leaning back in his chair, St. Vincent made a temple of his elegant hands and regarded Cam steadily. “Since you’ve had no problem with lack of desire in the past, I can only assume that, as happens with other appetites, yours has been sated with an overabundance of sameness. A bit of novelty may be just the thing.” Considering the statement, which actually made sense, Cam wondered if the notorious former rake had ever been tempted to stray. Having known Evie since childhood, when she had come to visit her widowed father at the club from time to time, Cam felt as protective of her as if she’d been his younger sister. No one would have paired the gentle-natured Evie with such a libertine. And perhaps no one had been as surprised as St. Vincent himself to discover their marriage of convenience had turned into a passionate love match. “What of married life?” Cam asked softly. “Does it eventually become an overabundance of sameness?” St. Vincent’s expression changed, the light blue eyes warming at the thought of his wife. “It has become clear to me that with the right woman, one can never have enough. I would welcome an overabundance of such bliss—but I doubt such a thing is mortally possible.” Closing the account book with a decisive thud, he stood from the desk. “If you’ll excuse me, Rohan, I’ll bid you good night.” “What about finishing the accounting?” “I’ll leave the rest in your capable hands.” At Cam’s scowl, St. Vincent shrugged innocently. “Rohan, one of us is an unmarried man with superior mathematical abilities and no prospects for the evening. The other is a confirmed lecher in an amorous mood, with a willing and nubile young wife waiting at home. Who do you think should do the damned account books?” And, with a nonchalant wave, St. Vincent had left the office.

On Wednesday night, November 13, (1861), Lincoln went with Seward and Hay to McClellan's house. Told that the general was at a wedding, the three waited in the parlor for an hour. When McClellan arrived home, the porter told him the president was waiting, but McClellan passed by the parlor room and climbed the stairs to his private quarters. After another half hour, Lincoln again sent word that he was waiting, only to be informed that the general had gone to sleep. Young John Hay was enraged, " I wish here to record what I consider a portent of evil to come," he wrote in his diary, recounting what he considered an inexcusable "insolence of epaulettes," the first indicator "of the threatened supremacy of the military authorities." To Hay's surprise, Lincoln "seemed not to have noticed it specially, saying it was better at this time not to be making points of etiquette & personal dignity." He would hold McClellan's horse, he once said, if a victory could be achieved. Though Lincoln, the consummate pragmatist, did not express anger at McClellan's rebuff, his aides fumed at every instance of such arrogance. Lincoln's secretary, William Stoddard, described the infuriating delay when he accompanied Lincoln to McClellan's anteroom. "A minute passes, then another, and then another, and with every tick of the clock upon the mantel your blood warms nearer and nearer its boiling-point. Your face feels hot and your fingers tingle, as you look at the man, sitting so patiently over there...and you try to master your rebellious consciousness." As time went by, Lincoln visited the haughty general less frequently. If he wanted to talk with McClellan, he sent a summons for him to appear at the White House.

He picked up a glass of Prosecco and handed it to me. “So you’re visiting here?” “I’m here for a year, studying at the accademia,” I said. “I got a bursary to take leave from my teaching job.” “Jolly nice. I’d make the most of it, if I were you. Venice is still one of the few civilized cities in the world. The racial laws created last year by Il Duce were supposed to exclude Jews from education and teaching and then to strip them of property. None of that has happened here. The Venetians still live quite happily and do business in the ghetto and turn a blind eye to those of Jewish origin, like our dear contessa here.” I looked at him with surprise and then turned my gaze to Contessa Fiorito. I remembered now that she had mentioned her parents were Jewish émigrés. “But her husband was an Italian count,” I said. “Indeed he was, but that has nothing to do with her racial origin. Born of a poor Jewish family in Paris, so I understand. Of course she is well respected here and does a lot in the way of philanthropy for the city. Most people don’t even know her heritage.” He drew closer to me. “I have advised her to have an escape plan ready, just in case.

But if my father could stand up to schoolmasters and if he inherited some of his own father's gifts as a teacher, he himself could never have become one. He could teach and loved teaching. He could radiate enthusiasm, but he could never impose discipline. He could never have taught a dull subject to a dull boy, never have said: "Do this because I say so." Enthusiasm spread knowledge sideways, among equals. Discipline forced it downwards from above. My father's relationships were always between equals, however old or young, distinguished or undistinguished the other person. Once, when I was quite little, he came up to the nursery while I was having my lunch. And while he was talking I paused between mouthfuls, resting my hands on the table, knife and fork pointing upwards. "You oughtn't really to sit like that," he said, gently. "Why not?" I asked, surprised. "Well..." He hunted around for a reason he could give. Because it's considered bad manners? Because you mustn't? Because... "Well," he said, looking in the direction my fork was pointing, "Suppose somebody suddenly fell through the ceiling. They might land on your fork and that would be very painful." "I see," I said, though I didn't really. It seemed such an unlikely thing to happen, such a funny reason for holding your knife and fork flat when you were not using them... But funny reason or not, it seems I have remembered it. In the same sort of way I learned about the nesting habits of starlings. I had been given a bird book for Easter (Easter 1934: I still have the book) and with its help I had made my first discovery. "There's a blackbird's nest in the hole under the tiles just outside the drawing-room window," I announced proudly. "I've just seen the blackbird fly in." "I think it's probably really a starling," said my father. "No, it's a blackbird," I said firmly, hating to be wrong, hating being corrected. "Well," said my father, realizing how I felt but at the same time unable to allow an inaccuracy to get away with it, "Perhaps it's a blackbird visiting a starling." A blackbird visiting a starling. Someone falling through the ceiling. He could never bear to be dogmatic, never bring himself to say (in effect): This is so because I say it is, and I am older than you and must know better. How much easier, how much nicer to escape into the world of fantasy in which he felt himself so happily at home.

O Lord, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all.… —Psalm 104:24 (NAS) In her intriguing book What’s Your God Language? Dr. Myra Perrine explains how, in our relationship with Jesus, we know Him through our various “spiritual temperaments,” such as intellectual, activist, caregiver, traditionalist, and contemplative. I am drawn to naturalist, described as “loving God through experiencing Him outdoors.” Yesterday, on my bicycle, I passed a tom turkey and his hen in a sprouting cornfield. Suddenly, he fanned his feathers in a beautiful courting display. I thought how Jesus had given me His own show of love in surprising me with that wondrous sight. I walked by this same field one wintry day before dawn and heard an unexpected huff. I had startled a deer. It was glorious to hear that small, secret sound, almost as if we held a shared pleasure in the untouched morning. Visiting my daughter once when she lived well north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, I can still see the dark silhouettes of the caribou and hear the midnight crunch of their hooves in the snow. I’d watched brilliant green northern lights flash across the sky and was reminded of the emerald rainbow around Christ’s heavenly throne (Revelation 4:3). On another Alaskan visit, a full moon setting appeared to slide into the volcanic slope of Mount Iliamna, crowning the snow-covered peak with a halo of pink in the emerging light. I erupted in praise to the triune God for the grandeur of creation. Traipsing down a dirt road in Minnesota, a bloom of tiny goldfinches lifted off yellow flowers growing there, looking like the petals had taken flight. I stopped, mesmerized, filled with the joy of Jesus. Jesus, today on Earth Day, I rejoice in the language of You. —Carol Knapp Digging Deeper: Pss 24:1, 145:5; Hb 2:14

Do you know where we are?” he whispered. “Surely that is Baker Street,” I answered, staring through the dim window. “Exactly. We are in Camden House, which stands opposite to our own old quarters.” “But why are we here?” “Because it commands so excellent a view of that picturesque pile. Might I trouble you, my dear Watson, to draw a little nearer to the window, taking every precaution not to show yourself, and then to look up at our old rooms--the starting-point of so many of your little fairy-tales? We will see if my three years of absence have entirely taken away my power to surprise you.” I crept forward and looked across at the familiar window. As my eyes fell upon it, I gave a gasp and a cry of amazement. The blind was down, and a strong light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me. He was quivering with silent laughter. “Well?” said he. “Good heavens!” I cried. “It is marvellous.” “I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,” said he, and I recognized in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in his own creation. “It really is rather like me, is it not?” “I should be prepared to swear that it was you.” “The credit of the execution is due to Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble, who spent some days in doing the moulding. It is a bust in wax. The rest I arranged myself during my visit to Baker Street this afternoon.

Growing up where she did, Beatrix had developed a romantic and adventurous nature, and she had no outlet for it any more. The happiest times I can remember spending with them were when we drove out - twice, I think - to the Long Mynd for a picnic. Roger had long since traded in his motorbike and scraped together enough money to buy a second-hand Morris Minor. Somehow we all squeezed into this (I seem to recall sitting in the front passenger seat, Beatrix sitting behind me with the baby on her lap) and drove out for the afternoon to those wonderful Shropshire hills. I wonder if you have ever walked on them yourself, Imogen. They are part of your story, you know. So many things have changed, changed beyond recognition, in the almost sixty years since the time I'm now recalling, but the Long Mynd is not one of them. In the last few months I have been too ill to walk there, but I did manage to visit in the last spring, to offer what I already sensed would be my final farewells. Places like this are important to me - to all of us - because they exist outside the normal timespan. You can stand on the backbone of the Long Mynd and not know if you are in the 1940s, the 2000s, the tenth or eleventh century... It is all immaterial, all irrelevant. The gorse and the purple heather are unchanging, and so are the sheeptracks which cut through them and criss-cross them, the twisted rocky outcrops which surprise you at every turn, the warm browns of the bracken, the distant greys of the conifer plantations, tucked far away down in secretive valleys. You cannot put a price on the sense of freedom and timelessness that is granted to you there, as you stand on the high ridge beneath a flawless sky of April blue and look across at the tame beauties of the English countryside, to the east, and to the west a hint of something stranger - the beginnings of the Welsh mountains

Runach took the book in hand and went to look for that Bruadarian lass, who was likely having a conversation with the flora and fauna of his grandfather's garden... He just hadn't expected her to be singing. It wasn't loud singing, though he could hear it once he'd wandered the garden long enough to catch sight of her, standing beneath a flowering linden tree, holding a blossom in her hand. Runach came to a skidding halt and gaped at her. Very well, so he had ceased to think of her as plain directly after Gobhann, and he had been struggling to come up with a worthy adjective ever since. He supposed he might spend the rest of his life trying, and never manage it. It was difficult to describe a dream. He had to sit down on the first bench he found, because he couldn't stand any longer. He wondered if the day would come where she ceased to surprise him with the things she did. Her song was nothing he had ever heard before, but for some reason it seemed familiar in a way he couldn't divine. It was enough for the moment to simply sit there and watch as she and the tree--and several of the flowers, it had to be said--engaged in an ethereal bit of music making. It was truthfully the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, and that was saying something, because the musicians who graced his grandfather's hall were unequalled in any Elvish hall he'd ever visited. And then Runach realized why what she was doing sounded so familiar. She was singing in Fadaire. He grasped for the rapidly disappearing shreds of anything resembling coherent thought, but it was useless. All he could do was sit on that very cold bench and listen to a woman who had hardly set foot past her place of incarceration, sing a song in his mother's native tongue, that would have brought any elf in the vicinity to tears if they had heard it. He knew because it was nigh onto bringing him to that place in spite of his sorry, jaded self.

Sheepwalking I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain-dead job and enough fear to keep them in line. You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking. The TSA “screener” who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A “customer service” rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars’ worth of TV time even though she knows it’s not working—she does it because her boss told her to. It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That’s because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain-dead stuff. We’ve mechanized what we could mechanize. What’s left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it’s not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheepish. Training a student to be sheepish is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep? And graduate school? Since the stakes are higher (opportunity cost, tuition, and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught. To be sheep. Well-educated, of course, but compliant nonetheless. And many organizations go out of their way to hire people that color inside the lines, that demonstrate consistency and compliance. And then they give these people jobs where they are managed via fear. Which leads to sheepwalking. (“I might get fired!”) The fault doesn’t lie with the employee, at least not at first. And of course, the pain is often shouldered by both the employee and the customer. Is it less efficient to pursue the alternative? What happens when you build an organization like W. L. Gore and Associates (makers of Gore-Tex) or the Acumen Fund? At first, it seems crazy. There’s too much overhead, there are too many cats to herd, there is too little predictability, and there is way too much noise. Then, over and over, we see something happen. When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And the sheepwalkers and their bosses just watch and shake their heads, certain that this is just an exception, and that it is way too risky for their industry or their customer base. I was at a Google conference last month, and I spent some time in a room filled with (pretty newly minted) Google sales reps. I talked to a few of them for a while about the state of the industry. And it broke my heart to discover that they were sheepwalking. Just like the receptionist at a company I visited a week later. She acknowledged that the front office is very slow, and that she just sits there, reading romance novels and waiting. And she’s been doing it for two years. Just like the MBA student I met yesterday who is taking a job at a major packaged-goods company…because they offered her a great salary and promised her a well-known brand. She’s going to stay “for just ten years, then have a baby and leave and start my own gig.…” She’ll get really good at running coupons in the Sunday paper, but not particularly good at solving new problems. What a waste. Step one is to give the problem a name. Done. Step two is for anyone who sees themselves in this mirror to realize that you can always stop. You can always claim the career you deserve merely by refusing to walk down the same path as everyone else just because everyone else is already doing it.

I wonder now who that someone else is today. Is he happier? Couldn’t I dip into his life for a few hours, a few days, and see for myself—not just to test if this other life is better, or to measure how our lives couldn’t be further apart because of Oliver, but also to consider what I would say to this other me were I to pay him a short visit one day. Would I like him, would he like me, would either of us understand why the other became who he is,would either be surprised to learn that each of us had in fact run into an Oliver of one sort or another, man or woman, and that we were very possibly, regardless of who came to stay with us that summer, one and the same person still?

Toyota wasn’t really worried that it would give away its “secret sauce.” Toyota’s competitive advantage rested firmly in its proprietary, complex, and often unspoken processes. In hindsight, Ernie Schaefer, a longtime GM manager who toured the Toyota plant, told NPR’s This American Life that he realized that there were no special secrets to see on the manufacturing floors. “You know, they never prohibited us from walking through the plant, understanding, even asking questions of some of their key people,” Schaefer said. “I’ve often puzzled over that, why they did that. And I think they recognized we were asking the wrong questions. We didn’t understand this bigger picture.” It’s no surprise, really. Processes are often hard to see—they’re a combination of both formal, defined, and documented steps and expectations and informal, habitual routines or ways of working that have evolved over time. But they matter profoundly. As MIT’s Edgar Schein has explored and discussed, processes are a critical part of the unspoken culture of an organization. 1 They enforce “this is what matters most to us.” Processes are intangible; they belong to the company. They emerge from hundreds and hundreds of small decisions about how to solve a problem. They’re critical to strategy, but they also can’t easily be copied. Pixar Animation Studios, too, has openly shared its creative process with the world. Pixar’s longtime president Ed Catmull has literally written the book on how the digital film company fosters collective creativity2—there are fixed processes about how a movie idea is generated, critiqued, improved, and perfected. Yet Pixar’s competitors have yet to equal Pixar’s successes. Like Toyota, Southern New Hampshire University has been open with would-be competitors, regularly offering tours and visits to other educational institutions. As President Paul LeBlanc sees it, competition is always possible from well-financed organizations with more powerful brand recognition. But those assets alone aren’t enough to give them a leg up. SNHU has taken years to craft and integrate the right experiences and processes for its students and they would be exceedingly difficult for a would-be competitor to copy. SNHU did not invent all its tactics for recruiting and serving its online students. It borrowed from some of the best practices of the for-profit educational sector. But what it’s done with laser focus is to ensure that all its processes—hundreds and hundreds of individual “this is how we do it” processes—focus specifically on how to best respond to the job students are hiring it for. “We think we have advantages by ‘owning’ these processes internally,” LeBlanc says, “and some of that is tied to our culture and passion for students.

lived within a mile of the place." My grandmother, who held that, when one went to the seaside, one ought to be on the beach from morning to night, to taste the salt breezes, and that one should not know anyone in the place, because calls and parties and excursions were so much time stolen from what belonged, by rights, to the sea-air, begged him on no account to speak to Legrandin of our plans; for already, in her mind's eye, she could see his sister, Mme. de Cambremer, alighting from her carriage at the door of our hotel just as we were on the point of going out fishing, and obliging us to remain indoors all afternoon to entertain her. But Mamma laughed her fears to scorn, for she herself felt that the danger was not so threatening, and that Legrandin would shew no undue anxiety to make us acquainted with his sister. And, as it happened, there was no need for any of us to introduce the subject of Balbec, for it was Legrandin himself who, without the least suspicion that we had ever had any intention of visiting those parts, walked into the trap uninvited one evening, when we met him strolling on the banks of the Vivonne. "There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and blues, which are very beautiful, are they not, my friend?" he said to my father. "Especially a blue which is far more floral than atmospheric, a cineraria blue, which it is surprising to see in the sky.

Yet as one senior administration official noted to me, 'People who blithely say that we'd win a trade war because China obviously couldn't sustain the damage caused by cutting off their goods are just naive and silly.' Any significant trade restrictions the United States imposed on China would swiftly lead to an equally harmful retaliation on the United States. That is why the most effective lobbyists against tariffs on Chinese goods are American companies that buy from China, do business in China, or have ventures with Chinese firms. So as Obama's outburst [of 'I need leverage!' to staff on a visit to Asia in 2011] underscored, the form of leverage threatened most often by Washington politicians looking for an easy applause line actually offers little leverage at all.

Since the tragedy of Marina’s death, her parents have heard from strangers around the globe surprised to find themselves writing to share the impact of “meeting” Marina through her words: Jewish teenagers visiting a series of concentration camps while on “The March of the Living” and finding specific comfort and renewed purpose in her writings; college peers living more mindfully; musicians writing songs inspired by her; older readers making midlife recalibrations and career changes, whether they are returning to school or shifting to a nonprofit or finishing that manuscript; people simply rediscovering a sense of hope. These new life paths all build from Marina’s own sense that it’s never too late to change, that we must take action, that we are indeed “in this together.

The Fates themselves grant us one or two places in our lives where the thread untwists and we can follow either one strand or the other. Better to know when and where those choices will come to us instead of being taken by surprise. “ “Why only one or two?” I asked, thinking of all the moments my life had already accumulated in which I’d chosen to follow a different path than the one most people would expect of me. “Why not say that every day lets me choose my own future?” The priest chuckled. “What a gift you have for joking, Lady Helen! You know your future. You’ll be Sparta’s queen, living a life blessed by the gods. Your only surprises will be the name of your husband and whether your babies will be sons or daughters. You don’t need to visit the Pythia. But your noble brothers will be heroes, making their own futures; heroes should know what awaits them.” “He’s right, Helen,” Castor said. “Polydeuces and I should know our fate.” Castor’s fate? He didn’t need an oracle to discover that; I could tell him exactly what it would be. The young priest’s glib words were better than underground fumes for giving me a vision of what lay in store for both of my brothers: They were going to have their ears filled with flattery, then be persuaded to leave a rich gift at Apollo’s shrine just to hear some poor girl babble riddles while she choked half to death on smoke. Then they’d made another offering just to have Apollo’s priests translate the Pythia’s wild words. If their gifts to the sun god were too extravagant, I could also predict what Father would have to say about it when we got home.

Neliss, why is this rug wet?” Legna peeked around the corner to glance at the rug in question, looking as if she had never seen it before. “We have a rug there?” “Did you or did you not promise me you were not going to practice extending how long you can hold your invisible bowls of water in the house? And what on earth is that noise?” “Okay, I confess to the water thing, which was an honest mistake, I swear it. But as for a noise, I have no idea what you are talking about.” “You cannot hear that? It has been driving me crazy for days now. It just repeats over and over again, a sort of clicking sound.” “Well, it took a millennium, but you have finally gone completely senile. Listen, this is a house built by Lycanthropes. It is more a cave than a house, to be honest. I have yet to decorate to my satisfaction. There is probably some gizmo of some kind lying around, and I will come across it eventually or it will quit working the longer it is exposed to our influence. Even though I do not hear anything, I will start looking for it. Is this satisfactory?” “I swear, Magdelegna, I am never letting you visit that Druid ever again.” “Oh, stop it. You do not intimidate me, as much as you would love to think you do. Now, I will come over there if you promise not to yell at me anymore. You have been quite moody lately.” “I would be a hell of a lot less moody if I could figure out what that damn noise is.” Legna came around the corner, moving into his embrace with her hands behind her back. He immediately tried to see what she had in them. “What is that?” “Remember when you asked me why I cut my hair?” “Ah yes, the surprise. Took you long enough to get to it.” “If you do not stop, I am not going to give it to you.” “Okay. I am stopping. What is it?” She held out the box tied with a ribbon to him and he accepted it with a lopsided smile. “I do not think I even remember the last time I received a gift,” he said, leaning to kiss her cheek warmly. He changed his mind, though, and opted to go for her mouth next. She smiled beneath the cling of their lips and pushed away. “Open it.” He reached for the ribbon and soon was pulling the top off the box. “What is this?” “Gideon, what does it look like?” He picked up the woven circlet with a finger and inspected it closely. It was an intricately and meticulously fashioned necklace, clearly made strand by strand from the coffee-colored locks of his mate’s hair. In the center of the choker was a silver oval with the smallest writing he had ever seen filling it from top to bottom. “What does it say?” “It is the medics’ code of ethics,” she said softly, taking it from him and slipping behind him to link the piece around his neck beneath his hair. “And it fits perfectly.” She came around to look at it, smiling. “I knew it would look handsome on you.” “I do not usually wear jewelry or ornamentation, but . . . it feels nice. How on earth did they make this?” “Well, it took forever, if you want to know why it took so long for me to make good on the surprise. But I wanted you to have something that was a little bit of me and a little bit of you.” “I already have something like that. It is you. And . . . and me, I guess,” he laughed. “We are a little bit of each other for the rest of our lives.” “See, that makes this a perfect symbol of our love,” she said smartly, reaching up on her toes to kiss him. “Well, thank you, sweet. It is a great present and an excellent surprise. Now, if you really want to surprise me, help me find out what that noise is.

After the loss of so much of the learning of the past, the destruction of manuscripts and the slaughter of scholars, it was more important to recover what had been lost than to inaugurate more change. Because the Mongol military code made no provision for civil society, the ulama continued to govern the lives of the faithful, and their influence tended to be conservative. Where Sufis such as Rumi believed that all religions were valid, by the fourteenth century the ulama had transformed the pluralism of the Quran into a hard communalism, which saw other traditions as irrelevant relics of the past. Non-Muslims were forbidden now to visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and it became a capital offence to make insulting remarks about the Prophet Muhammad. The trauma of the invasions had, not surprisingly, made Muslims feel insecure. Foreigners were not only suspect; they could be as lethal as the Mongols.

But then I don’t begin to understand a lot of things about Sweden and Norway. It’s as if they are determined to squeeze all the pleasure out of life. They have the highest income-tax rates, the highest VAT rates, the harshest drinking laws, the dreariest bars, the dullest restaurants, and television that’s like two weeks in Nebraska. Everything costs a fortune. Even the purchase of a bar of chocolate leaves you staring in dismay at your change, and anything larger than that brings tears of pain to your eyes. It’s bone-crackingly cold in the winter and it does nothing but rain the rest of the year. The most fun thing to do in these countries is walk around semi-darkened shopping centers after they have closed, looking in the windows of stores selling wheelbarrows and plastic garden furniture at prices no one can afford. On top of that, they have shackled themselves with some of the most inane and restrictive laws imaginable, laws that leave you wondering what on earth they were thinking about. In Norway, for instance, it is illegal for a barman to serve you a fresh drink until you have finished the previous one. Does that sound to you like a matter that needs to be covered by legislation? It is also illegal in Norway for a bakery to bake bread on a Saturday or Sunday. Well, thank God for that, say I. Think of the consequences if some ruthless Norwegian baker tried to foist fresh bread on people at the weekend. But the most preposterous law of all, a law so pointless as to scamper along the outer margins of the surreal, is the Swedish one that requires motorists to drive with their headlights on during the daytime, even on the sunniest summer afternoon. I would love to meet the guy who thought up that one. He must be head of the Department of Dreariness. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if on my next visit to Sweden all the pedestrians are wearing miners’ lamps.

His expression was perturbed, as if he’d been reminded of something he had wanted to forget. But as his gaze slid over her bewildered face, his mouth curved a little, and he settled into the cradle of her body with an insolent familiarity that temporarily robbed her of breath. “Mr. Rohan … how … why … what are you doing here?” He replied without moving, as if he were planning to lie there and converse all day. His infinitely polite tone was an unsettling contrast to the intimacy of their position. “Miss Hathaway. What a pleasant surprise. As it happens, I’m visiting friends. And you?” “I live here.” “I don’t think so. This is Lord Westcliff’s estate.” Her heart thundered in her breast as her body absorbed the details of him. “I didn’t mean precisely here, I meant over there, on the other side of the woods. The Ramsay estate. We’ve just taken up residence.” She couldn’t seem to stop herself from chattering in the aftermath of nerves and fright. “What was that noise? What were you doing? Why do you have that tattoo on your arm? It’s a pooka—an Irish creature—isn’t it?” That last question earned her an arrested stare. Before Rohan could reply, the other two men approached. From her prone position, Amelia had an upside-down view of them. Like Rohan, they were in their shirtsleeves, with waistcoats left unbuttoned. One of them was a portly old gentleman with a shock of silver hair. He held a small wood-and-metal sextant, which had been strung around his neck on a lanyard. The other, black-haired man looked to be in his late thirties. He wasn’t as tall as Rohan, but he had an air of authority tempered with aristocratic arrogance. Amelia made a helpless movement, and Rohan lifted away from her with fluid ease. He helped her stand, his arm steadying her. “How far did it go?” he asked the men. “Devil take the rocket,” came a gravelly reply. “What is the woman’s condition?” “Unharmed.” The silver-haired gentleman remarked, “Impressive, Rohan. You covered a distance of fifty yards in no more than five or six seconds.” “I would hardly miss a chance to leap on a beautiful woman,” Rohan said, causing the older man to chuckle.

Aboard the crowded ships, the men grew restless, and some began asking why their promised semiannual salary payment had not yet been made. They sent a petition to Sir James Houblon, asking that salaries be paid out to the sailors or their wives, as previously agreed. In response, Houblon told his agent to put several petitioners in irons and lock them in the ships’ dank brigs. Such reaction did not put the sailors’ minds at rest. While visiting other vessels in La Coruna’s sleepy harbor, some of the married sailors were able to send word back to their wives in England. A letter informed the women of their husbands’ plight and urged them to meet Houblon in person to demand the wages they no doubt needed to survive. The women then confronted Houblon, a wealthy merchant and founding deputy governor of the Bank of England, whose brother was chief governor of the Bank and would soon become Lord Mayor of London. His response chilled them to the bone. The ships and their men were now under the king of Spain’s control and as far as he was concerned the king could “pay them or hang them if he pleased.

Tiffany’s basket was on the table. It had a present in it, of course. Everyone knew you took a small present along when you went visiting, but the person you were visiting was supposed to be surprised when you gave it to her, and say things like “Oooh, you shouldn’t have.” “I brought you something,” said Tiffany, swinging the big black kettle onto the fire. “You’ve got no call to be bringing me presents, I’m sure,” said Granny sternly. “Yes, well,” said Tiffany, and left it at that. She heard Granny lift the lid of the basket. There was a kitten in it. “Her mother is Pinky, the Widow Cable’s cat,” said Tiffany, to fill the silence. “You shouldn’t have,” growled the voice of Granny Weatherwax. “It was no trouble.” Tiffany smiled at the fire. “I can’t be havin’ with cats.” “She’ll keep the mice down,” said Tiffany, still not turning around. “Don’t have mice.” Nothing for them to eat, thought Tiffany. Aloud, she said, “Mrs. Earwig’s got six big black cats.” In the basket, the white kitten would be staring up at Granny Weatherwax with the sad, shocked expression of all kittens. You test me, I test you, Tiffany thought. “I don’t know what I shall do with it, I’m sure. It’ll have to sleep in the goat shed,” said Granny Weatherwax. Most witches had goats. [...] When Tiffany left, later on, Granny Weatherwax said good-bye at the door and very carefully shut the kitten outside. Tiffany went across the clearing to where she’d tied up Miss Treason’s broomstick. But she didn’t get on, not yet. She stepped back up against a holly bush, and went quiet until she wasn’t there anymore, until everything about her said: I’m not here. Everyone could see pictures in the fire and in clouds. You just turned that the other way around. You turned off that bit of yourself that said you were there. You dissolved. Anyone looking at you would find you very hard to see. Your face became a bit of leaf and shadow, your body a piece of tree and bush. The other person’s mind would fill in the gaps. Looking like just another piece of holly bush, she watched the door. The wind had got up, warm but worrisome, shaking the yellow and red leaves off the sycamore trees and whirring them around the clearing. The kitten tried to bat a few of them out of the air and then sat there, making sad little mewling noises. Any minute now, Granny Weatherwax would think Tiffany had gone and would open the door and— “Forgot something?” said Granny by her ear. She was the bush. “Er...it’s very sweet. I just thought you might, you know, grow to like it,” said Tiffany, but she was thinking: Well, she could have got here if she ran, but why didn’t I see her? Can you run and hide at the same time? “Never you mind about me, my girl,” said the witch. “You run along back to Miss Treason and give her my best wishes, right now. But”—and her voice softened a little—“that was good hiding you did just then. There’s many as would not have seen you. Why, I hardly heard your hair growin’!” When Tiffany’s stick had left the clearing, and Granny Weatherwax had satisfied herself in other little ways that she had really gone, she went back inside, carefully ignoring the kitten again. After a few minutes, the door creaked open a little. It may have been just a draft. The kitten trotted inside...

Jack Sanford looks back fondly on childhood visits to the old family farmhouse in New Hampshire. In particular, he’s never forgotten the old well that stood outside the front door. The water from the well was surprisingly pure and cold, and no matter how hot the summer or how severe the drought, the well was always dependable, a source of refreshment and joy. The faithful old well was a big part of his memories of summer vacations at the family farmhouse. Time passed and eventually the farmhouse was modernized. Wiring brought electric lights, and indoor plumbing brought hot and cold running water. The old well was no longer needed, so it was sealed shut. Years later while vacationing at the farmhouse, Sanford hankered for the cold, pure water of his youth. So he unsealed the well and lowered the bucket for a nostalgic taste of the delightful refreshment he once knew. But he was shocked to discover that the well that had once survived the worst droughts was bone dry. Perplexed, he began to ask questions of the locals who knew about these kinds of things. He learned that wells of that sort were fed by hundreds of tiny underground rivulets, which seep a steady flow of water. As long as water is drawn out of the well, new water will flow in through the rivulets, keeping them open for more to flow. But when the water stops flowing, the rivulets clog with mud and close up. The well dried up not because it was used too much but because it wasn’t used enough. Our souls are like that well. If we do not draw regularly and frequently on the living water that Jesus promised would well up in us like a spring,66 our hearts will close and dry up. The consequence of not drinking deeply of God is to eventually lose the ability to drink at all. Prayerlessness is its own worst punishment, both its disease and cause. David’s description of his prayer life is a picture of a man who knew the importance of frequent, regular prayer—disciplined prayer, each morning. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly. He knew how important it was to keep the water flowing—that from the human side of prayer, the most important thing to do is just to keep showing up. Steady, disciplined routine may be the most underrated necessity of the prayerful life.

I number it among my blessings that my father had no car, while yet most of my friends had, and sometimes took me for a drive. This meant that all these distant objects could be visited just enough to clothe them with memories and not impossible desires, while yet they remained ordinarily as inaccessible as the Moon. The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given me. I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return I possessed ‘infinite riches’ in what would have been to motorists ‘a little room’. The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it ‘annihilates space’. It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from travelling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there.

There, in that presumed paradise, the engineers were stranded in the company of an infantile mentality. They created artificial smartness, made a simulacrum of intelligence. But what they talked to all day was little more than a mechanism that read bits off a disk drive. If a comma in the code was out of place, it complained like a kid who won’t tolerate a pea touching the mashed potatoes. And, exhausted though the programmer may be, the machine was like an uncanny child that never got tired. There was Karl and the rest of the team, fitting the general definition of the modern software engineer: a man left alone all day with a cranky, illiterate thing, which he must somehow make grow up. It was an odd and satisfying gender revenge. Is it any surprise that these isolated men need relief, seek company, hook up This is not to say that women are not capable of engineering’s male-like isolation. Until I became a programmer, I didn’t thoroughly understand the usefulness of such isolation: the silence, the reduction of life to thought and form; for example, going off to a dark room to work on a program when relations with people get difficult. I’m perfectly capable of this isolation. I first noticed it during the visit of a particularly tiresome guest. All I could think was: There’s that bug waiting for me, I really should go find that bug.

What did you say to them?” “Told them I was Stan Shunpike. First person I could think of.” “And they believed that?” “They weren’t the brightest. One of them was definitely part troll, the smell off him…” Ron glanced at Hermione, clearly hopeful she might soften at this small instance of humor, but her expression remained stony above her tightly knotted limbs. “Anyway, they had a row about whether I was Stan or not. It was a bit pathetic to be honest, but there were still five of them and only one of me and they’d taken my wand. Then two of them got into a fight and while the others were distracted I managed to hit the one holding me in the stomach, grabbed his wand, Disarmed the bloke holding mine, and Disapparated. I didn’t do it so well, Splinched myself again”--Ron held up his right hand to show two missing fingernails; Hermione raised her eyebrows coldly--“and I came out miles from where you were. By the time I got back to that bit of riverbank where we’d been…you’d gone.” “Gosh, what a gripping story,” Hermione said in the lofty voice she adopted when wishing to wound. “You must have been simply terrified. Meanwhile we went to Godric’s Hollow and, let’s think, what happened there, Harry? Oh yes, You-Know-Who’s snake turned up, it nearly killed both of us, and then You-Know-Who himself arrived and missed us by about a second.” “What?” Ron said, gaping from her to Harry, but Hermione ignored him. “Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn’t it?” “Hermione,” said Harry quietly, “Ron just saved my life.” She appeared not to have heard him. “One thing I would like to know, though,” she said, fixing her eyes on a spot a foot over Ron’s head. “How exactly did you find us tonight? That’s important. Once we know, we’ll be able to make sure we’re not visited by anyone else we don’t want to see.” Ron glared at her, then pulled a small silver object from his jeans pocket. “This.” She had to look at Ron to see what he was showing them. “The Deluminator?” she asked, so surprised she forgot to look cold and fierce. “It doesn’t just turn the lights on and off,” said Ron. “I don’t know how it works or why it happened then and not any other time, because I’ve been wanting to come back ever since I left. But I was listening to the radio really early on Christmas morning and I heard…I heard you.” He was looking at Hermione. “You heard me on the radio?” she asked incredulously. “No, I heard you coming out of my pocket. Your voice,” he held up the Deluminator again, “came out of this.” “And what exactly did I say?” asked Hermione, her tone somewhere between skepticism and curiosity. “My name. ‘Ron.’ And you said…something about a wand…” Hermione turned a fiery shade of scarlet. Harry remembered: It had been the first time Ron’s name had been said aloud by either of them since the day he had left; Hermione had mentioned it when talking about repairing Harry’s wand.

Galveston?” he asked in that amazing voice, still surprising me by keeping our conversation going. “Yeah. Staying at a beach house and everything. Totally slumming it and having a miserable time, you know?” I gave him a real smile that time. Rip just raised his brows. “I promised her I would go visit, and she promised she would come up too... What’s that face for?” I surprised myself by laughing. “I don’t believe it either. I’ll get lucky if she comes once. I’m not that delusional.” I didn’t imagine the way his cheek twitched again, just a little, just enough to keep the smile on my face. “I’m stuck making my own lunches from now on. I have nobody to watch scary movies with who’s more dramatic than I am screaming at the scary parts. And my house is empty,” I told him, going on a roll. “Your lunches?” was what he picked up on. I wasn’t sure how much he’d had to drink that he was asking me so many questions, but I wasn’t going to complain. “I can’t cook to save my life, boss. I thought everyone knew. Baking is the only thing I can handle.” “You serious?” he asked in a surprised tone. I nodded. “For real?” “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I can’t even make rice in an Instant Pot. It’s either way too dry or it’s mush.” Oh. “An Instant Pot is—” “I know what it is,” he cut me off. It was my turn to make a face, but mine was an impressed one. He knew what an Instant Pot was but not a rom-com. Okay. “Sorry.” He didn’t react to me trying to tease him, instead he asked, “You can’t even make rice in that?” “Nope.” “You know there’s instructions online.” Was he messing with me now? I couldn’t help but watch him a little. How much had he drunk already? “Yeah, I know.” “And you still screw it up?” I blinked, soaking up Chatty Cathy over here like a plant that hadn’t seen the sun in too long. “I wouldn’t say I screw it up. It’s more like… you either need to chew a little more or a little less.” It was his turn to blink. “It’s a surprise. I like to keep people on their toes.” If I hadn’t been guessing that he’d had a couple drinks before, what he did next would have confirmed it. His left cheek twitched. Then his right one did too, and in the single blink of an eye, Lucas Ripley was smiling at me. Straight white teeth. That not-thin but not-full mouth dark pink and pulled up at the edges. He even had a dimple. Rip had a freaking dimple. And I wanted to touch it to make sure it was real. I couldn’t help but think it was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen, even though I had zero business thinking anything along those lines. But I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t say a single word to mention it; otherwise, it might never come out again. What I did trust myself to do was gulp down half of my Sprite before saying, “You can make rice, I’m guessing?” If he wanted to talk, we could talk. I was good at talking. “Uh-huh,” he replied, sounding almost cocky about it. All I could get myself to do in response was grin at him, and for another five seconds, his dimple—and his smile—responded to me.

Around Christmas 2003, we visited Chris’s parents in Texas. I found myself exceptionally hungry, though I couldn’t figure out why. When we came back to California, I just felt something was off. Could I be…pregnant? Nah. I bought a pregnancy test just in case. Chris and I had always planned to have children, but we weren’t in a rush about it. In fact, we had only recently decided to be “a little less careful.” It was a compromise between our spontaneous impulses and our careful planning instincts, which we both shared. We figured, if it happens somewhere in the next year… I was upstairs in the house working when I decided to take a break and check things out. Wow. WOW!!! Chris happened to be home fiddling with something in the garage. I ran downstairs, holding the stick in my hand. When I got there, I held it up, waving. “Hey, babe,” he said, looking at me as if I were waving a sword. “Come here,” I said. “I have to show you something.” He came over. I showed him the stick. “Okay?” “Look!” “What is it?” “Look at this!” Obviously, he wasn’t familiar with home pregnancy tests. Maybe that’s a guy thing-given that the tests reveal either your worst nightmare or one of the most exciting events of your life. I’d wager every woman in America knows what they are and how they work. Slowly it dawned on him. “Oh my God,” he said, stunned. “Are you…?” “Yes!” We confirmed it at the doctor’s soon after. I know you’re supposed to wait something like twelve weeks before telling anyone-there’s so much that can go wrong-but we couldn’t keep that kind of secret to ourselves for more than a few days. We ended up sending packages with an ultrasound and baby booties-one pink, one blue-to our parents, telling them we had a late Christmas surprise and to call us so we could be on the phone when they opened them.

Everything and Nothing* There was no one inside him; behind his face (which even in the bad paintings of the time resembles no other) and his words (which were multitudinous, and of a fantastical and agitated turn) there was no more than a slight chill, a dream someone had failed to dream. At first he thought that everyone was like him, but the surprise and bewilderment of an acquaintance to whom he began to describe that hollowness showed him his error, and also let him know, forever after, that an individual ought not to differ from its species. He thought at one point that books might hold some remedy for his condition, and so he learned the "little Latin and less Greek" that a contemporary would later mention. Then he reflected that what he was looking for might be found in the performance of an elemental ritual of humanity, and so he allowed himself to be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long evening in June. At twenty-something he went off to London. Instinctively, he had already trained himself to the habit of feigning that he was somebody, so that his "nobodiness" might not be discovered. In London he found the calling he had been predestined to; he became an actor, that person who stands upon a stage and plays at being another person, for an audience of people who play at taking him for that person. The work of a thespian held out a remarkable happiness to him—the first, perhaps, he had ever known; but when the last line was delivered and the last dead man applauded off the stage, the hated taste of unreality would assail him. He would cease being Ferrex or Tamerlane and return to being nobody. Haunted, hounded, he began imagining other heroes, other tragic fables. Thus while his body, in whorehouses and taverns around London, lived its life as body, the soul that lived inside it would be Cassar, who ignores the admonition of the sibyl, and Juliet, who hates the lark, and Macbeth, who speaks on the moor with the witches who are also the Fates, the Three Weird Sisters. No one was as many men as that man—that man whose repertoire, like that of the Egyptian Proteus, was all the appearances of being. From time to time he would leave a confession in one corner or another of the work, certain that it would not be deciphered; Richard says that inside himself, he plays the part of many, and Iago says, with curious words, I am not what I am. The fundamental identity of living, dreaming, and performing inspired him to famous passages. For twenty years he inhabited that guided and directed hallucination, but one morning he was overwhelmed with the surfeit and horror of being so many kings that die by the sword and so many unrequited lovers who come together, separate, and melodiously expire. That very day, he decided to sell his theater. Within a week he had returned to his birthplace, where he recovered the trees and the river of his childhood and did not associate them with those others, fabled with mythological allusion and Latin words, that his muse had celebrated. He had to be somebody; he became a retired businessman who'd made a fortune and had an interest in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. It was in that role that he dictated the arid last will and testament that we know today, from which he deliberately banished every trace of sentiment or literature. Friends from London would visit his re-treat, and he would once again play the role of poet for them. History adds that before or after he died, he discovered himself standing before God, and said to Him: I , who have been so many men in vain, wish to be one, to be myself. God's voice answered him out of a whirlwind: I, too, am not I; I dreamed the world as you, Shakespeare, dreamed your own work, and among the forms of my dream are you, who like me, are many, yet no one.

This is from Elizabeth,” it said. “She has sold Havenhurst.” A pang of guilt and shock sent Ian to his feet as he read the rest of the note: “I am to tell you that this is payment in full, plus appropriate interest, for the emeralds she sold, which, she feels, rightfully belonged to you.” Swallowing audibly, Ian picked up the bank draft and the small scrap of paper with it. On it Elizabeth herself had shown her calculation of the interest due him for the exact number of days since she’d sold the gems, until the date of her bank draft a week ago. His eyes ached with unshed tears while his shoulders began to rock with silent laughter-Elizabeth had paid him half a percent less than the usual interest rate. Thirty minutes later Ian presented himself to Jordan’s butler and asked to see Alexandra. She walked into the room with accusation and ire shooting from her blue eyes as she said scornfully, “I wondered if that note would bring you here. Do you have any notion how much Havenhurst means-meant-to her?” “I’ll get it back for her,” he promised with a somber smile. “Where is she?” Alexandra’s mouth fell open at the tenderness in his eyes and voice. “Where is she?” he repeated with calm determination. “I cannot tell you,” Alex said with a twinge of regret. “You know I cannot. I gave my word.” “Would it have the slightest effect,” Ian countered smoothly, “if I were to ask Jordan to exert his husbandly influence to persuade you to tell me anyway?” “I’m afraid not,” Alexandra assured him. She expected him to challenge that; instead a reluctant smile drifted across his handsome face. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “You’re very like Elizabeth. You remind me of her.” Still slightly mistrustful of his apparent change of heart, Alex said primly, “I deem that a great compliment, my lord.” To her utter disbelief, Ian Thornton reached out and chucked her under the chin. “I meant it as one,” he informed her with a grin. Turning, Ian started for the door, then stopped at the sight of Jordan, who was lounging in the doorway, an amused, knowing smile on his face. “If you’d keep track of your own wife, Ian, you would not have to search for similarities in mine.” When their unexpected guest had left, Jordan asked Alex, “Are you going to send Elizabeth a message to let her know he’s coming for her?” Alex started to nod, then she hesitated. “I-I don’t think so. I’ll tell her that he asked where she is, which is all he really did.” “He’ll go to her as soon as he figures it out.” “Perhaps.” “You still don’t trust him, do you?” Jordan said with a surprised smile. “I do after this last visit-to a certain extent-but not with Elizabeth’s heart. He’s hurt her terribly, and I won’t give her false hopes and, in doing so, help him hurt her again.” Reaching out, Jordan chucked her under the chin as his cousin had done, then he pulled her into his arms. “She’s hurt him, too, you know.” “Perhaps,” Alex admitted reluctantly. Jordan smiled against her hair. “You were more forgiving when I trampled your heart, my love,” he teased. “That’s because I loved you,” she replied as she laid her cheek against his chest, her arms stealing around his waist. “And will you love my cousin just a little if he makes amends to Elizabeth?” “I might find it in my heart,” she admitted, “if he gets Havenhurst back for her.” “It’ll cost him a fortune if he tries,” Jordan chuckled. “Do you know who bought it?” “No, do you?” He nodded. “Philip Demarcus.” She giggled against his chest. “Isn’t he that dreadful man who told the prince he’d have to pay to ride in his new yacht up the Thames?” “The very same.” “Do you suppose Mr. Demarcus cheated Elizabeth?” “Not our Elizabeth,” Jordan laughed. “But I wouldn’t like to be in Ian’s place if Demarcus realizes the place has sentimental value to Ian. The price will soar.

One of my best friends is LinDee Loveland, who is a Bible teacher at OCS and the children’s minister at our church. She and another friend and teacher, Mrs. Rita, were there at the hospital with us. As soon as they heard that everything had gone well, the two of them gathered all of Mia’s cousins together. “Missy, what’s Mia’s room number?” LinDee asked. I rattled it off, then quickly caught up with Jase, who was heading to the recovery room. We spent an hour in the recovery room with Mia, and when she was ready to be moved to her regular hospital room, Jase and I walked beside her gurney. When we walked into her room, I burst into tears. Mia’s room was beautiful! Several weeks before Mia’s scheduled surgery, Mrs. LinDee had asked the children at church to make snowflakes that would be given to a child who needed some encouragement. Mia even made one herself and signed it. “Each individual snowflake is special, and no two are alike,” Mrs. LinDee told them. “It’s the same way with us,” she shared. “No two people are alike. God makes everyone unique and special, with a purpose designed to glorify Him.” Later, when Mia wasn’t there, she asked all the children to make cards for Mia. When LinDee and the cousins scooted out of the waiting room, they went straight to Mia’s room and hung up the cards and the snowflakes all over her room. Mia was awake by the time she got back to her room, and when she saw the decorations, she literally oohed and ahhed. Dr. Sperry and Dr. Genecov both made the same comment when they visited Mia later. “I’ve never seen a room like this! This is the most decorated room that’s ever been in this hospital!” And Dr. Sperry summed it up beautifully: “Wow, somebody must really love you.” Having a room decorated means so much to a child--and maybe even more to a child’s parents. The fact that so many of Mia’s friends had created such exquisite, handmade snowflakes and worked so hard to make cards for her, and that Mrs. LinDee, Mrs. Rita, and all the cousins surprised us with the final display, spoke volumes to me about the way people loved Mia and our family. That expression of creativity was not only beautiful, it also touched my heart deeply.

During [Erté]’s childhood St. Petersburg was an elegant centre of theatrical and artistic life. At the same time, under its cultivated sophistication, ominous rumbles could be distinguished. The reign of the tough Alexander III ended in 1894 and his more gentle successor Nicholas was to be the last of the Tsars … St. Petersburg was a very French city. The Franco-Russian Pact of 1892 consolidated military and cultural ties, and later brought Russia into the First World war. Two activities that deeply influenced [Erté], fashion and art, were particularly dominated by France. The brilliant couturier Paul Poiret, for whom Erté was later to work in Paris, visited the city to display his creations. Modern art from abroad, principally French, was beginning to be show in Russia in the early years of the century … In St. Petersburg there were three Imperial theatres―the Maryinsky, devoted to opera and ballet, the Alexandrinsky, with its lovely classical façade, performing Russian and foreign classical drama, and the Michaelovsky with a French repertoire and company … It is not surprising that an artistic youth in St. Petersburg in the first decade of this century should have seen his future in the theatre. The theatre, especially opera and ballet, attracted the leading young painters of the day, including Mikhail Vrubel, possibly the greatest Russian painter of the pre-modernistic period. The father of modern theatrical design in Russia was Alexandre Benois, an offspring of the brilliant foreign colony in the imperial capital. Before 1890 he formed a club of fellow-pupils who were called ‘The Nevsky Pickwickians’. They were joined by the young Jew, Leon Rosenberg, who later took the name of one of his grandparents, Bakst. Another member introduced his cousin to the group―Serge Diaghilev. From these origins emerged the Mir Iskustva (World of Art) society, the forerunner of the whole modern movement in Russia. Soon after its foundation in 1899 both Benois and Bakst produced their first work in the theatre, The infiltration of the members of Mir Iskustva into the Imperial theatre was due to the patronage of its director Prince Volkonsky who appointed Diaghilev as an assistant. But under Volkonsky’s successor Diagilev lost his job and was barred from further state employment. He then devoted his energies and genius to editing the Mir Iskustva magazine and to a series of exhibitions which introduced Russia to work of foreign artists … These culminated in the remarkable exhibition of Russian portraiture held at the Taurida Palace in 1905, and the Russian section at the salon d'Autumne in Paris the following year. This was the most comprehensive Russian exhibition ever held, from early icons to the young Larionov and Gontcharova. Diagilev’s ban from Russian theatrical life also led to a series of concerts in Paris in 1907, at which he introduced contemporary Russian composers, the production Boris Godunov the following year with Chaliapin and costumes and décor by Benois and Golovin, and then in 1909, on May 19, the first season of the ballet Russes at the Châtelet Theatre.