The Browning Version Quotes

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.

Worrying about scarcity is our culture's version of post-traumatic stress. It happens when we've been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability) we're angry and scared and at each other's throats.

A slightly modified version of the Serenity Prayer: Lord, grant me the serenity to ignore the assholes I cannot avoid; The luck to avoid the ones I can; And the self-awareness not to be one myself

What do we call a story that’s based on limited real data and imagined data and blended into a coherent, emotionally satisfying version of reality? A conspiracy theory.

By contrast Hobie lived and wafted like some great sea mammal in his own mild atmosphere, the dark brown of tea stains and tobacco, where every clock in the house said something different and time didn’t actually correspond to the standard measure but instead meandered along at its own sedate tick-tock, obeying the pace of his antique-crowded backwater, far from the factory-built, epoxy-glued version of the world.

I discovered a version of the sinner's prayer that increased my faith far more than the one that I had said years earlier...In this version, there were no formulas, no set phrases that promised us safe passage across the abyss. There was only our tattered trust that the Spirit who had given us life would not leave us in the wilderness without offering us life again.

Through its inability to solve its racial problems, the United States handed the Soviet Union one of the most effective propaganda weapons in their arsenal. Newly independent countries around the world, eager for alliances that would support their emerging identities and set them on their path to long-term prosperity, were confronted with a version of the same question black Americans had asked during World War II. Why would a black or brown nation stake its future on America's model of democracy when within its own borders the United States enforced discrimination and savagery against people who looked just like them?

Natura nihil agit frustra, [Nature does nothing in vain] is the only indisputed Axiome in Philosophy.

The sweet-smelling aroma of the island spices still hung in the air. It filled his nostrils and titillated his appetite all over again. His appetite drove him mad for something much more than food.

The most underused tool in the kitchen is the brain. I blame the food media (yes, that of which I am a part) who have lulled us into a state of recipe slavery. We don’t think about recipes as much as we perform them.

Tuileries Gardens—Paris’s own version of Central Park.

Then there was the realisation that I didn't actually feel that much better when I was thin(ner). In fact the 'thin' version felt worse because I lived with hunger clawing at my stomach all the time, and in fear that I was going to get fat again. After years of neuroticism I'd finally understood those who loved me would continue to put up with me fat or thin, and those who didn't ignored me. As a middle-aged woman I was pretty much invisible anyway. To pass unnoticed through an image-obsessed society is surprisingly liberating.

Passion against Reason, Reason against Faith, Faith against the Devil, and my Conscience against all.

Interestingly, admiration often leads to us wanting to improve ourselves. It doesn’t, however, make us want to be like the person or thing we admire—we just want to be better versions of ourselves

my blue eyes peering into their brown eyes and seeing there some essential part of myself, some irreducible aspect of my being, which in turn gave them back the same reflected version of themselves

The life changing seems always bracketed by the mundane. The quotidian wrapped around the profound, like plain brown paper concealing the emotional version of an improvised explosive device. Then, in a single interminable moment, when we discover the bomb, absolutely everything changes. But when we recall it from our now forever-changed lives, when we start with the plain brown wrapping, it looks like every other package, every other morning, every other walk.

I am not so much fun Anymore; Couldn’t carry the role of ingenue In a bucket, you say, laughing. And I want to punch you. I was never innocent, but Thanks to you I know things I wish I did not remember. You don’t like it When I talk to the man myself, Specifying quantities and Give him the money Instead of giving it to you And letting you take care of it. You keep asking me, Where’s the dope? Until I finally say, I hid it. The look you give me is Pure bile. Well, fuck you. This isn’t like Buying somebody a drink. You don’t leave your stash out Where I might find it. Finally I think I’ve made you wait Long enough, So I get out the little paper envelope And hand it to you. You are still in charge of This part, so you relax. Performing your junky ritual with Your favorite razor blade, until I ask you how to calculate my dose So I won’t O.D. when I do this And you’re not around. Then you really flip. You tell me it’s a bad idea For me to do this with other people. ** Was it such a good idea For me to do it with you? Do you wait for me to turn up Once every three months So you can get high? Is this our version of that famous Lesbian fight about Nonmonogamy? Let me tell you what I don’t like. I don’t like it when you Take forever to cut up brown powder And cook it down and Suck it up into the needle And measure it, then take Three times as much for yourself AS you give me. I don’t like it when you Fuck me After you’ve taken the needle Out of my arm. You talk too much And spoil my rush. All I really want to do Is listen to the tides of blood Wash around inside my body Telling me everything is Fine, fine, fine._ And I certainly don’t want to Eat you or fuck you Because it will take forever To make you come, If you can come at all, And by then the smack will have worn off And there isn’t any more. I’m trying to remember What the part is that I do like. I think this shit likes me A lot more than I like it. Now you’re hurt and angry because I don’t want to see you again And the truth is, I would love to see you, As long as I knew you were holding. So you tell me Is this what you want? I bet it was what you wanted All along.

By contrast Hobie lived and wafted like some great sea mammal in his own mild atmosphere, the dark brown of tea stains and tobacco, where every clock in the house said something different and time didn’t actually correspond to the standard measure but instead meandered along at its own sedate tick-tock, obeying the pace of his antique-crowded backwater, far from the factory-built, epoxy-glued version of the world. Though he enjoyed going out to the movies, there was no television; he read old novels with marbled end papers; he didn’t own a cell phone; his computer, a prehistoric IBM, was the size of a suitcase and useless.

we’ve presented these watered-down versions of ourselves to each other.

There are a great many things one can learn to do without actually doing them. Grilling is not one of them.

Burt’s eyes may be sad and brown and tangled in a spider web of wrinkles, but I reckon he’s lived my version of a perfect life—a life full of dogs.

of the boys, and very thin. Though Charlie could not see her whole outfit, she was wearing a loose white shirt with an embroidered vest, and she had a brimmed hat perched on her glossy, shoulder-length brown hair, with an enormous flower threatening to tip it off her head. She was gesturing excitedly about something as she spoke.               The two boys were sitting next to each other, facing her. Carlton looked like an older version of his red-headed childhood self. He still had a bit of a baby face, but his features had refined, and

I used to wish I had an easier life," he mused. "Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they're half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They've had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it's ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day's like. It's going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out." He'd also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. "Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I've learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life's more exciting and intense that way. It's like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks.

Everyone puts so much energy into meeting the right one. They try too hard for perfection and end up with their version of the right person but for all the wrong reasons. Or even worse, they end up being single for too long.

a story in its entirety, but to tell an inevitably abbreviated version in the most interesting way one could. Giving shape and direction to something otherwise formless and elastic. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. Lede and kicker.

The death of the idealized versions of our parents, teachers, and mentors—a stage in the hero’s journey—is always scary because it means that we’re now responsible for our own learning and growth. That death is also beautiful because it makes room for new relationships—more honest connections between authentic adults who are doing the best they can. Of course, these new connections require emotional and physical safety. We can’t be vulnerable and open with people who are hurting us.

Where do we come from? Where are we going? These fundamental questions of human existence have always obsessed me, and for years I’ve dreamed of finding the answers.” Edmond paused, his tone turning somber. “Tragically, on account of religious dogma, millions of people believe they already know the answers to these big questions. And because not every religion offers the same answers, entire cultures end up warring over whose answers are correct, and which version of God’s story is the One True Story.

Joseph Goebbels had artfully accomplished what all good propagandists must, convincing the world that their version of reality was reasonable and their opponents’ version biased. In doing that, Goebbels had not only created a compelling vision of the new Germany but also undercut the Nazis’ opponents in the West—whether they were American Jews in New York City or members of Parliament in London or anxious Parisians—making all of them seem shrill, hysterical, and misinformed. As thousands of Americans returned home from the games that fall, many of them felt as one quoted in a German propaganda publication did: “As for this man Hitler. . . . Well I believe we should all like to take him back to America with us and have him organize there just as he has done in Germany.

Sometimes, on the last day of class, I had out cards with versions of the Golden Rule on them. "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." That one is from Judaism. "None of you is a believer until you love for your brother what you love for yourself." That one is from Islam. "This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you." That one is from Hinduism. Some version of the principle shows up in all the great religions of the world, which is a large part of what makes them great: they ask members inside the tribe to use their humanity as the benchmark for how to treat those outside the tribe.

Listening to the radio, I heard the story behind rocker David Lee Roth’s notorious insistence that Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters contain a clause specifying that a bowl of M&M’s has to be provided backstage, but with every single brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation to the band. And at least once, Van Halen followed through, peremptorily canceling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&M’s in his dressing room. This turned out to be, however, not another example of the insane demands of power-mad celebrities but an ingenious ruse. As Roth explained in his memoir, Crazy from the Heat, “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.” So just as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be article 126, the no-brown-M&M’s clause. “When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl,” he wrote, “well, we’d line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error.… Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.” These weren’t trifles, the radio story pointed out. The mistakes could be life-threatening. In Colorado, the band found the local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena floor.

I have underlined words and sentences in one of the Bibles that has always been my study Bible, but when I look at those words and sentences now, I can’t remember why they were underlined. One day I was rereading a short story by Joanne Greenberg, and I came across a long passage that I had marked off, but as I looked at it, I couldn't remember why. Perhaps I had meant to ask her about it the next time we talked on the phone, but now I have no idea what it could be that I wanted to ask her. My Revised Standard version of the Bible is filled with markings, for I have gone through it word for word with study groups at least four times, and of course, I have used it on various occasions to begin speeches. I know that the underlined passages served some purpose, but here and there are verses that have no special meaning to me. It is almost as if a friend had secretly opened the book and made some markings just to tease me. What was the spirit trying to say to me then that I no longer need to hear? Or, what was I listening for then that I no longer care about?

Days after the elections of 2016, asha sent me a link to a talk by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. We have to have hope, she says to me across 3,000 miles, she in Brooklyn, me in Los Angeles. We listen together as Dr. deGrasse Tyson explains that the very atoms and molecules in our bodies are traceable to the crucibles in the centers of stars that once upon a time exploded into gas clouds. And those gas clouds formed other stars and those stars possessed the divine-right mix of properties needed to create not only planets, including our own, but also people, including us, me and her. He is saying that not only are we in the universe, but that the universe is in us. He is saying that we, human beings, are literally made out of stardust. And I know when I hear Dr. deGrasse Tyson say this that he is telling the truth because I have seen it since I was a child, the magic, the stardust we are, in the lives of the people I come from. I watched it in the labor of my mother, a Jehovah's Witness and a woman who worked two and sometimes three jobs at a time, keeping other people's children, working the reception desks at gyms, telemarketing, doing anything and everything for 16 hours a day the whole of my childhood in the Van Nuys barrio where we lived. My mother, cocoa brown and smooth, disowned by her family for the children she had as a very young and unmarried woman. My mother, never giving up despite never making a living wage. I saw it in the thin, brown face of my father, a boy out of Cajun country, a wounded healer, whose addictions were borne of a world that did not love him and told him so not once but constantly. My father, who always came back, who never stopped trying to be a version of himself there were no mirrors for. And I knew it because I am the thirteenth-generation progeny of a people who survived the hulls of slave ships, survived the chains, the whips, the months laying in their own shit and piss. The human beings legislated as not human beings who watched their names, their languages, their Goddesses and Gods, the arc of their dances and beats of their songs, the majesty of their dreams, their very families snatched up and stolen, disassembled and discarded, and despite this built language and honored God and created movement and upheld love. What could they be but stardust, these people who refused to die, who refused to accept the idea that their lives did not matter, that their children's lives did not matter?

We make up hidden stories that tell us who is against us and who is with us. Whom we can trust and who is not to be trusted. Conspiracy thinking is all about fear-based self-protection and our intolerance for uncertainty. When we depend on self-protecting narratives often enough, they become our default stories. And we must not forget that storytelling is a powerful integration tool. We start weaving these hidden, false stories into our lives and they eventually distort who we are and how we relate to others. When unconscious storytelling becomes our default, we often keep tripping over the same issue, staying down when we fall, and having different versions of the same problem in our relationships—we’ve got the story on repeat. Burton explains that our brains like predictable storytelling. He writes, “In effect, well-oiled patterns of observation encourage our brains to compose a story that we expect to hear.” The men and women who have cultivated rising strong practices in their lives became aware of the traps in these first stories, whereas the participants who continued to struggle the most appeared to have gotten stuck in those stories. The good news is that people aren’t born with an exceptional understanding of the stories they make up, nor does it just dawn on them one day. They practiced. Sometimes for years. They set out with the intention to become aware and they tried until it worked. They captured their conspiracies and confabulations. Capturing

Then Toraf opens the passenger side door…Wait. That’s not Toraf. I’ve never seen this man before, yet he’s eerily familiar. His silhouette sitting next to Galen was definitely classic Syrena male, but the glare from the sun had hidden his face. I’d naturally just assumed that where there’s a Galen, there’s a Toraf. Now that his face is in full view though, I see that this man looks like a slightly older version of Galen. Slightly older as in slightly more jaded. Other than that, he could be his twin brother. It may be because he’s wearing some of Galen’s clothes, a wrinkled brown polo shirt and plaid shorts. But he shares other things, too, besides clothes. He’s handsome like Galen, with the same strong jaw and the same eyebrow shape and the way he’s wearing the same expression on his face that Galen is-that he’s found what he’s been looking for. Only, the stranger’s expression clearly divulges that he’s been looking for a lot longer than Galen has-and this man is not looking at me. And that’s when I know just exactly who he is. That’s when I believe the look in Galen’s eyes. That he didn’t lie to me, that he loves me. Because this man has to be Grom. Mom confirms it with a half cry, half growl. “No. No. It can’t be.” Even if she weren’t handcuffed to Rachel right now, I’m not sure she’d actually be able to move. Disbelief has a special way of paralyzing you. With every step the man takes toward Rachel’s car, he shakes his head more vigorously. It’s like he’s deliberately taking his time, drinking in the moment, or maybe he just can’t believe this moment is actually happening. Yep, disbelief is a cruel hag.

When unconscious storytelling becomes out default, we often keep tripping over the same issue, staying down when we fall, and having different versions of the same problem in our relationships--we've got the story on repeat. Burton explains that our brains like predictable storytelling. He writes, "In effect, well-oiled patterns of observation encourage our brains to compose a story that we expect to hear.

The Pop-Tarts page is often aflutter. Pop-Tarts, it says as of today (February 8, 2008), were discontinued in Australia in 2005. Maybe that's true. Before that it said that Pop-Tarts were discontinued in Korea. Before that Australia. Several days ago it said: "Pop-Tarts is german for Little Iced Pastry O' Germany." Other things I learned from earlier versions: More than two trillion Pop-Tarts are sold each year. George Washington invented them. They were developed in the early 1960s in China. Popular flavors are "frosted strawberry, frosted brown sugar cinnamon, and semen." Pop-Tarts are a "flat Cookie." No: "Pop-Tarts are a flat Pastry, KEVIN MCCORMICK is a FRIGGIN LOSER notto mention a queer inch." No: "A Pop-Tart is a flat condom." Once last fall the whole page was replaced with "NIPPLES AND BROCCOLI!!!!!

Frank Marshall Davis, the former Communist who was Obama’s mentor in Hawaii, was so radical that he opposed President Truman’s Marshall Plan as a “device” for maintaining “white imperialism.” Truman and Marshall, he wrote, were using “billions of U.S. dollars to bolster the tottering empires of England, France, Belgium, Holland and the other western exploiters of teeming millions.” Indeed the objective of America after World War II was “to re-enslave the yellow and brown and black peoples of the world.” While Davis spurned America he praised “Red Russia” as “my friend.”3 Young Obama—sitting in Davis’s hut in Hawaii week after week for several years—took it all in. This portrait of devoted young Obama imbibing the ravings of a pot-smoking former Communist is the progressive version of a Norman Rockwell painting.

By contrast Hobie lived and wafted like some great sea mammal in his own mild atmosphere, the dark brown of tea stains and tobacco, where every clock in the house said something different and time didn't actually correspond to the standard measure but instead meandered along at its own sedate tick-tock obeying the pace of his antique-crowded backwater, far from the factory-built, epoxy-glued version of the world.

Beware the God who seeks praise. Beware the guru who presumes to teach that which is unfixed and boundless. Beware the healer who sets a price on aid. Beware the lover who would make you a lesser version of yourself. Beware the doctrines that discourage independent thought. Beware any person of faith who doesn’t understand doubt. Filter all things through yourself. Accept only that which sits right with your soul.

Akos had appeared in my doorway, his short brown hair sticking out in all directions, leaning into the wood. “What,” he said, eyes wide, “is that sound?” In spite of the current’s pain shooting through me, I laughed. I had never seen him this disheveled before. His drawstring pants were twisted halfway around, and his cheek bore the red imprint of creased sheets. “It’s just the start of the Sojourn Festival,” I said. “Relax. Untwist your pants.” His cheeks turned faintly pink, and he righted the waistband of his pants. “Well, how was I supposed to know that?” he replied irritably. “Next time, when something that sounds remarkably like war drums is going to wake me at dawn, could you maybe warn me?” “You’re determined to deprive me of fun.” “That’s because apparently, your version of ‘fun’ is making me believe I’m in mortal peril.

As Ted sat, feeling the evolution of the afternoon, he found himself thinking of Susan. Not the slightly different version of Susan, but Susan herself — his wife — on a day many years ago, before Ted had begun folding up his desire into the tiny shape it had become. On a trip to New York, riding the Staten Island Ferry for fun, because neither one of them had ever done it, Susan turned to him suddenly and said, "Let's make sure it's always like this." And so entwined were their thoughts at that point that Ted knew exactly why she'd said it: not because they'd made love that morning or drunk a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse at lunch — because she'd felt the passage of time. And then Ted felt it, too, in the leaping brown water, the scudding boats and wind — motion, chaos everywhere — and he'd held Susan's hand and said, "Always. It will always be like this.

A set of four Browning L9A1 automatic pistols complete with attachable silencers was perhaps the most important aspect of their gear for this mission. The weapons were standard issue in the British military, plus a few dozen other countries, and were basically just modified versions of a design that dated back to the 1930s. Old they might have been, but they were tried and true, and hopefully enough to see the group out of trouble if it came down to it

Other books depended less on personal contacts than on certain abiding concerns. Early in his career, Dreiser had become interested in a crime that he saw as a dark version of the American success motif: the murder of a woman who stood in the way of her lover’s dreams of social and material advancement through a more advantageous marriage. For An American Tragedy (1925) he investigated numerous case histories, many of them sensational murders involving well-known figures such as Roland Molineux and Harry Thaw. He finally settled on the 1906 Chester Gillette trial for the murder of Grace Brown that occurred in the lake district of upstate New York. The novel benefited from the popular interest in criminal biography, a form to which Dreiser’s masterpiece gave new life as the progenitor of documentary novels of crime such as Richard Wright’s Native Son, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser

Despite a seemingly pervasive belief that only people of colour ‘play the race card’, it does not take anything as dramatic as a slave revolution or Japanese imperialism to evoke white racial anxieties, something as trivial as the casting of non-white people in films or plays in which a character was ‘supposed’ to be white will do the trick. For example, the casting of Olivier award-winning actress Noma Dumezweni to play the role of Hermione in the debut West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child got bigots so riled up that J. K. Rowling felt the need to respond and give her blessing for a black actress to play the role. A similar but much larger controversy occurred when the character Rue in the film The Hunger Games was played by a black girl, Amandla Stenberg. Even though Rue is described as having brown skin in the original novel, ‘fans’ of the book were shocked and dismayed that the movie version cast a brown girl to play the role, and a Twitter storm of abuse about the ethnic casting of the role ensued. You have to read the responses to truly appreciate how angry and abusive they are.- As blogger Dodai Stewart pointed out at the time: All these . . . people . . . read The Hunger Games. Clearly, they all fell in love with and cared about Rue. Though what they really fell in love with was an image of Rue that they’d created in their minds. A girl that they knew they could love and adore and mourn at the thought of knowing that she’s been brutally killed. And then the casting is revealed (or they go see the movie) and they’re shocked to see that Rue is black. Now . . . this is so much more than, 'Oh, she’s bigger than I thought.’ The reactions are all based on feelings of disgust. These people are MAD that the girl that they cried over while reading the book was ‘some black girl’ all along. So now they’re angry. Wasted tears, wasted emotions. It’s sad to think that had they known that she was black all along, there would have been [no] sorrow or sadness over her death.

In the book Daring Greatly, shame researcher Brené Brown introduces the idea of "minding the gap." She's talking about the values gap: the space between who we are now and who we want to be. Minding the gap is part of walking toward the horizon we talked about in the previous chapter. There will always be times when we are imperfect, when we fall short of the best possible versions of ourselves. Minding the gap is being aware of where we are now and striving to move in the direction we want to go. That's part of living with integrity.

Music fills the space between them. Mark wants to take the pill that keeps him awake, but not in front of his daughter. Instead, he flirts. "There's a lot of trouble with a brown-eyed handsome man. In your travels have you found this to be true?" This is Madeleine's favorite game. His role is to ask silly questions and hers is to answer as if he is serious, neither one acknowledging the other conversation that goes on wordlessly around them, in which some other, better version of themselves say: Isn't it nice to be father and daughter?

In the middle of this endless, moon-drenched night, I had stepped into the Second South and seen that my South was a luxury I did not know I had. I could pass through this second one on and off all day and rarely feel the difference. For the first time, I understood that I was pregnant with a boy who would always know. Right now, secreted inside me, my son was protected by the lining of my own white hide. I could drift along, seeing only the South’s best version of itself if I so chose. But once my son was out, brown-skinned and himself? He wouldn’t have that choice.

Well, first of all,” Langdon said, “Edmond inscribed this piece in clay as an homage to mankind’s earliest written language, cuneiform.” The woman blinked, looking uncertain. “The three heavy markings in the middle,” Langdon continued, “spell the word ‘fish’ in Assyrian. It’s called a pictogram. If you look carefully, you can imagine the fish’s open mouth facing right, as well as the triangular scales on his body.” The assembled group all cocked their heads, studying the work again. “And if you look over here,” Langdon said, pointing to the series of depressions to the left of the fish, “you can see that Edmond made footprints in the mud behind the fish, to represent the fish’s historic evolutionary step onto land.” Heads began to nod appreciatively. “And finally,” Langdon said, “the asymmetrical asterisk on the right—the symbol that the fish appears to be consuming—is one of history’s oldest symbols for God.” The Botoxed woman turned and scowled at him. “A fish is eating God?” “Apparently so. It’s a playful version of the Darwin fish—evolution consuming religion.” Langdon gave the group a casual shrug. “As I said, pretty clever.

Can we train ourselves to be a good partner in a relationship? A good business partner? Can we train ourselves to do better at managing our finances? Absolutely. Honey, you can always be the best version of yourself if you put the time in. But if you are getting into these relationships with whoever comes your way and still not developing yourself, you are going to fail every time. Focusing on readying yourself will also give you the discernment to recognize who might be the right partner in the first place. I don’t want you to lose the fight, honey, so stay out of the ring until you’re ready to be there.

It’s a long story,” he said, taking a sip of Mr. Braeburn’s whiskey, “so I will tell only a very condensed version of it. “Mrs. Marsden and I grew up on adjacent properties in the Cotswold. But the Cotswold, as fair as it is, plays almost no part in this tale. Because it was not in the green, unpolluted countryside that we fell in love, but in gray, sooty London. Love at first sight, of course, a hunger of the soul that could not be denied.” Bryony trembled somewhere inside. This was not their story, but her story, the determined spinster felled by the magnificence and charm of the gorgeous young thing. He glanced at her. “You were the moon of my existence; your moods dictated the tides of my heart.” The tides of her own heart surged at his words, even though his words were nothing but lies. “I don’t believe I had moods,” she said severely. “No, of course not. ‘Thou art more lovely and more temperate’—and the tides of my heart only rose ever higher to crash against the levee of my self-possession. For I loved you most intemperately, my dear Mrs. Marsden.” Beside her Mrs. Braeburn blushed, her eyes bright. Bryony was furious at Leo, for his facile words, and even more so at herself, for the painful pleasure that trickled into her drop by drop. “Our wedding was the happiest hour of my life, that we would belong to each other always. The church was filled with hyacinths and camellias, and the crowd overflowed to the steps, for the whole world wanted to see who had at last captured your lofty heart. “But alas, I had not truly captured your lofty heart, had I? I but held it for a moment. And soon there was trouble in Paradise. One day, you said to me, ‘My hair has turned white. It is a sign I must wander far and away. Find me then, if you can. Then and only then will I be yours again.’” Her heart pounded again. How did he know that she had indeed taken her hair turning white as a sign that the time had come for her to leave? No, he did not know. He’d made it up out of whole cloth. But even Mr. Braeburn was spellbound by this ridiculous tale. She had forgotten how hypnotic Leo could be, when he wished to beguile a crowd. “And so I have searched. From the poles to the tropics, from the shores of China to the shores of Nova Scotia. Our wedding photograph in hand, I have asked crowds pale, red, brown, and black, ‘I seek an English lady doctor, my lost beloved. Have you seen her?’” He looked into her eyes, and she could not look away, as mesmerized as the hapless Braeburns. “And now I have found you at last.” He raised his glass. “To the beginning of the rest of our lives.

Before 1975, if you knew the name Howard Sackler it was because he was the author behind the 1969 Broadway play The Great White Hope, which won Sackler the Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle award as the year’s Best Play as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A friend of film producer David Brown, Sackler accepted the offer to do a re-write on Jaws author Peter Benchley’s script for the film version of his novel. Sackler’s main contribution to the story was the back story that the shark fisherman, Quint, derived his hatred for sharks from having survived the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in July of 1945 (in the film, Quint errantly states the date as “June the 29th, 1945”).

It was all very different from the crowded, complicated, and overly formal atmosphere of the Barbours’, where everything was rehearsed and scheduled like a Broadway production, an airless perfection from which Andy had been in constant retreat, scuttling to his bedroom like a frightened squid. By contrast Hobie lived and wafted like some great sea mammal in his own mild atmosphere, the dark brown of tea stains and tobacco, where every clock in the house said something different and time didn’t actually correspond to the standard measure but instead meandered along at its own sedate tick-tock, obeying the pace of his antique-crowded backwater, far from the factory-built, epoxy-glued version of the world.

The letter just printed contains the first allusion in Miss Barrett’s letters to any of her own writings. The translation of the ‘Prometheus Bound’ of Aeschylus was the first-fruits of the removal to Sidmouth. It was written, as she told Horne eleven years afterwards, ‘in twelve days, and should have been thrown into the fire afterwards — the only means of giving it a little warmth.’ Indeed, so dissatisfied did she subsequently become with it, that she did what she could to suppress it, and in the collected edition of 1850 substituted another version, written in 1845, which she hoped would secure the final oblivion of her earlier attempt. The letter given above shows that the composition of the earlier version took place at the end of 1832; and in the following year it was published by Mr. Valpy,

Queen of the Night Salsa 2.0 This is a jazzed-up version of an earlier recipe from our Precious Darlin’ George. He is ever seeking new and more delicious ways to please us and we adore him for this and other reasons.   MIX ALL THIS stuff together—1 15-ounce can drained and rinsed black beans, 1 11-ounce can Niblets corn, 1 small can chopped green chilis, 1 small can chopped black olives, 2 to 3 chopped fresh tomatoes, at least 8 ounces shredded Monterey Jack, 1 bunch chopped green onions, some cilantro (fresh or dried, to taste), 1/2 teaspoon chili powder, 1/2 teaspoon cumin, 1/2 to 3/4 of a 16-ounce bottle of Wishbone Robusto Italian dressing, and a whole big lot of chopped-up bacon. Obviously, the more bacon, the better—duh. Chill all that overnight in the refrigerator and then eat it all at one sitting the next day with Fritos.

First, the idea of the multiverse is essentially the fantasy of preserving perfect information. One of the hard things to deal with in life is the fact that you destroy potential information whenever you make a decision. You could even say that's essentially what regret is: a profound problem of incomplete information. If you select one thing on a diner's menu, you can't know what it would have been like to taste other things on it, right then, right there. When you marry one person, you give up the possibility of knowing what it would have been like to have married any number of others. But if the multiverse exists, you can at least imagine there's another version of you who's eating that other thing you thought about ordering, or who's married to that other man you only went on two dates with. Even if you'll never see all the information for yourself, at least you'll be able to tell yourself that it's there. 'The second reason the multiverse seems like such a neat idea is that it gives human beings just an incredible amount of agency, which they can exercise with the least effort. Why, Carson here created an entire alternate universe when he ordered hash browns on the side of his French toast instead of bacon—' 'Ah, I should have gotten bacon, how could I forget,' Carson said, and attempted to hail the waitress. 'But the history of science shows that any theory that covertly panders to the human ego like that, that puts humans at the center of things, is very likely to be found out wrong, given enough time. So, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that there's just this one universe, and we're stuck with it. What happens to our time traveler then?

and here instead’s another version of what was happening that morning, as if from a novel in which sophia is the kind of character she’d choose to be, prefer to be, a character in a much more classic sort of story, perfectly honed and comforting, about how sombre yet bright the major-symphony of winter is and how beautiful everything looks under a high frost, how every grassblade is enhanced and silvered into individual beauty by it, how even the dull tarmac of the roads, the paving under our feet, shines when the weather’s been cold enough and how something at the heart of us, at the heart of all our cold and frozen states, melts when we encounter a time of peace on earth, goodwill to all men; a story in which there’s no room for severed heads; a work in which sophia’s perfectly honed minor-symphony modesty and narrative decorum complement the story she’s in with the right kind of quiet wisdom-from-experience ageing-female status, making it a story that’s thoughtful, dignified, conventional in structure thank god, the kind of quality literary fiction where the slow drift of snow across the landscape is merciful, has a perfect muffling decorum of its own, snow falling to whiten, soften, blur and prettify even further a landscape where there are no heads divided from bodies hanging around in the air or anywhere, either new ones, from new atrocities or murders or terrorisms, or old ones, left over from old historic atrocities and murders and terrorisms and bequeathed to the future as if in old french revolution baskets, their wickerwork brown with the old dried blood, placed on the doorsteps of the neat and central-heating-interactive houses of now with notes tied to the handles saying please look after this head thank you, well, no, thank you, thank you very much:

— The opening argument was one of Devlin-Brown’s favorite parts of a trial. In a case like this, it was sometimes all that mattered. The U.S. Attorney’s Office had a formula for it, a system that was passed down through generations of prosecutors. It started with what they called “the grab”—a quick, two-minute summary of the case, meant to capture the jury’s attention. The grab could begin in one of two ways. The first was with a big thematic idea, as in, “This is a case about greed.” Devlin-Brown preferred what he called the “It was a dark and stormy night” beginning, which dropped the jurors right into a dramatic scene. Just like in a movie. On this day, his version began with, “It was July of 2008.” He spoke in a gentle, even voice. “Mathew Martoma, the defendant, was one of about a thousand people packed into a crowded Chicago convention hall waiting for an expert on Alzheimer’s disease to take the stage.” Sidney Gilman, he explained, was at an international Alzheimer’s conference to unveil the results of a hotly anticipated drug trial. The results of

When they got to the table, it was easy to recognize some of the dishes just from their pictures in the book. Skillet Broken Lasagna, which smelled of garlic and bright tomato; Fluffy Popovers with Melted Brie and Blackberry Jam (she started eating that the minute she picked it up and could have cried at the sweet, creamy-cheesy contrast to the crisp browned dough). There were also the two versions of the coconut rice, of course, and Trista had placed them next to the platter of gorgeously browned crispy baked chicken with a glass bowl of hot honey, specked with red pepper flakes, next to it, and in front of the beautifully grilled shrimp with serrano brown sugar sauce. Every dish was worthy of an Instagram picture. Which made sense, since Trista had, as Aja had pointed out, done quite a lot of food porn postings. There was also Cool Ranch Taco Salad on the table, which Margo had been tempted to make but, as with the shrimp dish, given that she had been ready to bail on the idea of coming right up to the last second, had thought better of, lest she have taco salad for ten that needed to be eaten in two days. Not that she couldn't have finished all the Doritos that went on top that quickly. But there hadn't been a Dorito in her house since college, and she kind of thought it ought to be a cause for celebration when she finally brought them back over the threshold of Calvin's ex-house. The Deviled Eggs were there too, thank goodness, and tons of them. They were creamy and crunchy and savory, sweet and- thanks to an unexpected pocket of jalapeño- hot, all at the same time. Classic party food. Classic church potluck food too. Whoever made those knew that deviled eggs were almost as compulsively delicious as potato chips with French onion dip. And, arguably, more healthful. Depending on which poison you were okay with and which you were trying to avoid. There was a gorgeous galaxy-colored ceramic plate of balsamic-glazed brussels sprouts, with, from what Margo remembered of the recipe, crispy bacon crumbles, sour cranberries, walnuts, and blue cheese, which was- Margo tasted it with hope and was not disappointed- creamy Gorgonzola Dolce.

As we’ve seen, one of the most frequently pursued paths for achievement-minded college seniors is to spend several years advancing professionally and getting trained and paid by an investment bank, consulting firm, or law firm. Then, the thought process goes, they can set out to do something else with some exposure and experience under their belts. People are generally not making lifelong commitments to the field in their own minds. They’re “getting some skills” and making some connections before figuring out what they really want to do. I subscribed to a version of this mind-set when I graduated from Brown. In my case, I went to law school thinking I’d practice for a few years (and pay down my law school debt) before lining up another opportunity. It’s clear why this is such an attractive approach. There are some immensely constructive things about spending several years in professional services after graduating from college. Professional service firms are designed to train large groups of recruits annually, and they do so very successfully. After even just a year or two in a high-level bank or consulting firm, you emerge with a set of skills that can be applied in other contexts (financial modeling in Excel if you’re a financial analyst, PowerPoint and data organization and presentation if you’re a consultant, and editing and issue spotting if you’re a lawyer). This is very appealing to most any recent graduate who may not yet feel equipped with practical skills coming right out of college. Even more than the professional skill you gain, if you spend time at a bank, consultancy, or law firm, you will become excellent at producing world-class work. Every model, report, presentation, or contract needs to be sophisticated, well done, and error free, in large part because that’s one of the core value propositions of your organization. The people above you will push you to become more rigorous and disciplined, and your work product will improve across the board as a result. You’ll get used to dressing professionally, preparing for meetings, speaking appropriately, showing up on time, writing official correspondence, and so forth. You will be able to speak the corporate language. You’ll become accustomed to working very long hours doing detail-intensive work. These attributes are transferable to and helpful in many other contexts.

English Gingerbread Cake Serves: 12 to 16 Baking Time: 50 to 60 minutes Kyle Cathie, editor for the British version of The Cake Bible (and now a publisher), informed me in no uncertain terms that a book could not be called a cake "bible" in England if it did not contain the beloved gingerbread cake. When I went to England to retest all the cakes using British flour and ingredients, I developed this gingerbread recipe. Now that I have tasted it, I quite agree with Kyle. It is a moist spicy cake with an intriguing blend of buttery, lemony, wheaty, and treacly flavors. Cut into squares and decorated with pumpkin faces, it makes a delightful "treat" for Halloween. Batter Volume Ounce Gram unsalted butter (65° to 75°F/19° to 23°C) 8 tablespoons (1 stick) 4 113 golden syrup or light corn syrup 1¼ cups (10 fluid ounces) 15 425 dark brown sugar, preferably Muscovado ¼ cup, firmly packed 2 60 orange marmalade 1 heaping tablespoon 1.5 40 2 large eggs, at room temperature ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons (3 fluid ounces) 3.5 100 milk 2/3 cup (5.3 fluid ounces) 5.6 160 cake flour (or bleached all-purpose flour) 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (or 1 cup), sifted into the cup and leveled off 4 115 whole wheat flour 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon (lightly spooned into the cup) 4 115 baking powder 1½ teaspoons . . cinnamon 1 teaspoon . . ground ginger 1 teaspoon . . baking soda ½ teaspoon . . salt pinch . . Special Equipment One 8 by 2-inch square cake pan or 9 by 2-inch round pan (see Note), wrapped with a cake strip, bottom coated with shortening, topped with a parchment square (or round), then coated with baking spray with flour Preheat the Oven Twenty minutes or more before baking, set an oven rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F/160°C. Mix the Liquid Ingredients In a small heavy saucepan, stir together the butter, golden syrup, sugar, and marmalade over medium-low heat until melted and uniform in color. Set aside uncovered until just barely warm, about 10 minutes. Whisk in the eggs and milk. Make the Batter In a large bowl, whisk together the cake flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, and salt. Add the butter mixture, stirring with a large silicone spatula or spoon just until smooth and the consistency of thick soup. Using the silicone spatula, scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the Cake Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a wire cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center. The cake should start to shrink from the sides of the pan only after removal from the oven. Cool the Cake Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. While the cake is cooling, make the syrup.

But the 1880s are also embedded in our lives in many smaller ways. Over a decade ago, in Creating the Twentieth Century, I traced several daily American experiences through mundane artifacts and actions that stem from that miraculous decade. A woman wakes up today in an American city and makes a cup of Maxwell House coffee (launched in 1886). She considers eating her favorite Aunt Jemima pancakes (sold since 1889) but goes for packaged Quaker Oats (available since 1884). She touches up her blouse with an electric iron (patented in 1882), applies antiperspirant (available since 1888), but cannot pack her lunch because she has run out of brown paper bags (the process to make strong kraft paper was commercialized in the 1880s). She commutes on the light rail system (descended directly from the electric streetcars that began serving US cities in the 1880s), is nearly run over by a bicycle (the modern version of which—with equal-sized wheels and a chain drive—was another creation of the 1880s: see engines are older than bicycles!, this page), then goes through a revolving door (introduced in a Philadelphia building in 1888) into a multistory steel-skeleton skyscraper (the first one was finished in Chicago in 1885). She stops at a newsstand on the first floor, buys a copy of the Wall Street Journal (published since 1889) from a man who rings it up on his cash register (patented in 1883). Then she goes up to the 10th floor in an elevator

It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.

But here’s the tricky part about compassion and connecting: We can’t call just anyone. It’s not that simple. I have a lot of good friends, but there are only a handful of people whom I can count on to practice compassion when I’m in the dark shame place. If we share our shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm. We want solid connection in a situation like this—something akin to a sturdy tree firmly planted in the ground. We definitely want to avoid the following: The friend who hears the story and actually feels shame for you. She gasps and confirms how horrified you should be. Then there is awkward silence. Then you have to make her feel better. The friend who responds with sympathy (I feel so sorry for you) rather than empathy (I get it, I feel with you, and I’ve been there). If you want to see a shame cyclone turn deadly, throw one of these at it: “Oh, you poor thing.” Or, the incredibly passive-aggressive southern version of sympathy: “Bless your heart.” The friend who needs you to be the pillar of worthiness and authenticity. She can’t help because she’s too disappointed in your imperfections. You’ve let her down. The friend who is so uncomfortable with vulnerability that she scolds you: “How did you let this happen? What were you thinking?” Or she looks for someone to blame: “Who was that guy? We’ll kick his ass.” The friend who is all about making it better and, out of her own discomfort, refuses to acknowledge that you can actually be crazy and make terrible choices: “You’re exaggerating. It wasn’t that bad. You rock. You’re perfect. Everyone loves you.” The friend who confuses “connection” with the opportunity to one-up you: “That’s nothing. Listen to what happened to me one time!

Behind the Fan by Author Caroline Walken Dottie stared at the flat white ceiling the tears subside replaced by a soft smile. All and all she has had a good life, not everyone was lucky enough to love that deeply. She remembered a time where she would catch him watching her. Nicky always looked at her with those dark, needy eyes, drinking her in. Dottie felt both exhilarated and alarmed by the emotion he evoked in her. She still recalls that first soft kiss, and then much later in the relationship, how good it felt entwined with him as dawn broke. In the beginning, it was a challenge to keep her head whenever he was near. Handsome and tall with an ornery twinkle in those soft brown eyes at all times. He was dangerous, and nothing she needed but everything she wanted. Dark hair, tall and broad-shouldered...the man was sin on earth to her. The old woman laid her head back; although weary, she resisted sleep having found comfort in her memories. Her mind tossed back his words, those that gave her solace in those early days after he passed. She expected them to fade over time until she no longer heard his voice within her. Instead, as she grew weaker, his words became stronger within her. Dottie wondered if anyone would believe their story and she regretted not having written it down before now. She feared her weary mind would never fully recall everything. It was a story of strength, one of love and partnership. Her girls could benefit from hearing it. Dottie turned to glance at her reflection; it was now deep in the night the city beyond her window slept. The woman in the glass bore silver hair and was thin, her eyes a watered version of their brilliance. Like her memory, she too had faded. She wondered if her family would see whom she had been or would they remain blinded by the frail being she had become. She had one more go left in her but after this; she was done. She had to make the most of this. To the unadorned walls she promised, “I am nearly ready Nicky, soon darling, very soon.

pine nuts and toss gently again. Green Bean, Tuna, and Mushroom “Casserole” One of my favorite things from my Midwestern upbringing is the green bean and mushroom casserole at Thanksgiving—probably the same one that was on your holiday table, thanks to the canned-mushroom-soup marketing campaign. This is my grown-up version of that casserole, which has all the comfort appeal of the childhood dish, but way better flavor and nutritional value. Make it with a one-to-one ratio of mushrooms to green beans, and have some fun with the beans, if you like—you can grill them, slice them thin and use raw, use pickled green beans, or use a mix of all of the above. » Serves 4 Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper Extra-virgin olive oil 2 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled 1 pound wild mushrooms, wiped off and cut into bite-size pieces (about 6 cups) One 5-ounce can oil-packed tuna, drained 1 pound green beans, trimmed 1 cup heavy cream 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice ⅓ cup Dried Breadcrumbs Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add salt until it tastes like the sea. Meanwhile, add ¼ cup olive oil to a skillet that’s large enough to hold all the mushrooms and beans and still have some room to stir the ingredients. Add the garlic and cook slowly over medium heat to toast the garlic so it’s very soft, fragrant, and nicely golden brown—but not burnt—about 5 minutes. Scoop out the garlic and set it aside so it doesn’t burn. Increase the heat to medium-high and add the mushrooms. Season generously with pepper and salt and sauté, tossing frequently, until the mushrooms are nicely browned around the edges, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the tuna and toss to incorporate. Keep this warm until the green beans are ready. Add the beans to the boiling water and boil until they are just a bit beyond crisp-tender, 4 to 7 minutes. Drain them thoroughly in a colander and then add them to the mushrooms and tuna. Add the cream, toss all the ingredients to coat, and simmer until the cream has reduced to a nice cloaking consistency and all the flavors are nicely blended, 6 to 9 minutes. Add the lemon zest and lemon juice and toss. Taste and adjust with more salt, pepper, or lemon juice. When the flavors are delicious, pile into a serving bowl and top with the breadcrumbs.

BUTTERSCOTCH BONANZA BARS Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   ½ cup salted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) 2 cups light brown sugar*** (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 beaten eggs (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 and ½cups flour (scoop it up and level it off with a table knife) 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) 2 cups butterscotch chips (optional) ***- If all you have in the house is dark brown sugar and the roads are icy, it’s below zero, and you really don’t feel like driving to the store, don’t despair. Measure out one cup of dark brown sugar and mix it with one cup regular white granulated sugar. Now you’ve got light brown sugar, just what’s called for in Leslie’s recipe. And remember that you can always make any type of brown sugar by mixing molasses into white granulated sugar until it’s the right color. Hannah’s Note: Leslie says the nuts are optional, but she likes these cookie bars better with nuts. So do I, especially with walnuts. Bertie Straub wants hers with a cup of chopped pecans and 2 cups of butterscotch chips. Mother prefers these bars with 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips and no nuts, Carrie likes them with 2 cups of mini chocolate chips and a cup of chopped pecans, and Lisa prefers to make them with 1 cup of chopped walnuts, 1 cup of white chocolate chips, and 1 cup of butterscotch chips. All this goes to show just how versatile Leslie’s recipe is. Try it first as it’s written with just the nuts. Then try any other versions that you think would be yummy. Grease and flour a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan, or spray it with nonstick baking spray, the kind with flour added. Set it aside while you mix up the batter. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat on the stovetop, or put it in the bottom of a microwave-safe, medium-sized mixing bowl and heat it for 1 minute in the microwave on HIGH. Add the light brown sugar to the mixing bowl with the melted butter and stir it in well. Mix in the baking powder and the salt. Make sure they’re thoroughly incorporated. Stir in the vanilla extract. Mix in the beaten eggs. Add the flour by half-cup increments, stirring in each increment before adding the next. Stir in the nuts, if you decided to use them. Mix in the butterscotch chips if you decided to use them, or any other chips you’ve chosen. Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth out the top with a rubber spatula. Bake the Butterscotch Bonanza Bars at 350 degrees F. for 20 to 25 minutes. (Mine took 25 minutes.) When the bars are done, take them out of the oven and cool them completely in the pan on a cold stove burner or a wire rack. When the bars are cool, use a sharp knife to cut them into brownie-sized pieces. Yield: Approximately 40 bars, but that all depends on how large you cut the squares. You may not believe this, but Mother suggested that I make these cookie bars with semi-sweet chocolate chips and then frost them with chocolate fudge frosting. There are times when I think she’d frost a tuna sandwich with chocolate fudge frosting and actually enjoy eating it!

It is in our nature to gravitate to what we believe is safe and familiar – even if our version of safe is a mirage.”   -Jeffery A. Brown  

HOMEMADE SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK cup boiling water 4 tablespoons butter ¾cup sugar ½teaspoon pure vanilla extract 1 cup powdered milk (I used Carnation Nonfat Pow- dered Milk, but I’ve also used my local grocery store brand.) In a blender, or using an electric mixer set on LOW, blend together the boiling water and butter. Add the sugar and let it run for a few seconds. Add the pure vanilla extract and let it run for several additional seconds. Shut off the blender or mixer, pour in the powdered milk, and then blend or mix on LOW until the resulting mixture is thick. Use immediately, or store in a covered container in the refrigerator. This homemade version of sweetened condensed milk will last for up to one week in the refrigerator. Yield: This recipe makes the equivalent of one 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk that can be used in pies, cakes, cookie bars and flans. Hannah’s Note: My Grandma Ingrid made this up every Sunday morning and put it in the refrigerator to use in coffee for the whole week. SUBSTITUTE FOR SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK (for anyone who needs to avoid milk or dairy) 2 large eggs 1 cup brown sugar (pack it down when you measure it) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 Tablespoons flour ½ teaspoon baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt Hannah’s 1st Note: This is easy to make if you use an electric mixer. You can also make it in a blender. You must make it fresh for each recipe you bake. Beat the eggs until they’re of a uniform color and thoroughly blended. Add the brown sugar and mix it in. Add the vanilla extract. Mix it in. Add the flour and beat for one minute, making sure it’s thoroughly incorporated into the mixture. Add the baking powder and the salt. Beat for another minute. Set the resulting mixture aside on the counter until you need it in your recipe. Then add it when your recipe calls for sweetened condensed milk. Hannah’s 2nd Note: This substitute can be used in any BAKED dessert recipe, including pies, cakes, and cookie bars. DO NOT use it in frostings or candy. Yield: One recipe makes enough to substitute for one 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk. (That’s the store-bought size.)

Following the Civil War, Americans began to perceive it new version of the earlier land-population-wealth crisis as an alarming trend of land consolidation and enclosure threatened the small landholders of the West. Henry George of San Francisco, later to be famous as the author of Progress and Poverty, articulated the new perception. George's social philosophy was moored in it deep belief in the homestead ethic.

The Great Expansion has come to Earth at last. We will celebrate Mogadorian Progress together, granddaughter.’ 2 From the cracked second-floor window of an abandoned textile factory, I watch an old man in a ragged trench coat and filthy jeans crouch down in the doorway of the boarded-up building across the street. Once he’s settled, the man pulls a brown-bagged bottle from his coat and starts drinking. It’s the middle of the afternoon – I’m on watch – and he’s the only living soul I’ve seen in this abandoned part of Baltimore since we got here yesterday. It’s a quiet, deserted place, and yet it’s still preferable to the version of Washington, D.C. I saw in Ella’s vision. For now at least, it doesn’t look like the Mogadorians have pursued us from Chicago. Although, technically, they wouldn’t have to. There’s already a Mogadorian among us. Behind me, Sarah stomps her foot. We’re in what used to be the foreman’s office, dust everywhere, the floorboards swollen and mildewed. I turn around just in time to see her frowning at the remains of a cockroach on the bottom of her sneaker. ‘Careful. You might go crashing right through the floor,’ I tell her, only half joking. ‘I guess it was too much to ask for all your secret bases to be in penthouse apartments, huh?’ Sarah asks, fixing me with a teasing smile. We slept in this old factory last night, our sleeping bags laid on the sunken floorboards. Both of us are filthy, it’s been a couple of days since our last real shower, and Sarah’s blond hair is caked with dirt. She’s still beautiful to me. Without her at my side, I might’ve totally lost it

She chose books because they never left her lonely the way that Kirk had left her lonely. BEcause company was often nothing of the kind, whereas a good book always was. She chose books for the smell of fresh-pressed pages, for the yellow-brown musk of library mould, but always for the breathy kiss of paper rustling. She chose books because some of the held prose that made her weep, or poetry that winded her, and words that mae her heart skip beats. She chose books because some came readey-made with characters that seemed like perfect versions of hrself, all of them little proofs that somehow, somewhere, it might just be possible for her to be better: to be popular, powerful, sexy and smart. She chose books because they lied to her with more conviction than people ever had.

At this late date, it’s hard for me to believe that anyone with intelligence or objectivity can continue to believe the Warren Commission’s ludicrous claim that President Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald, and that no conspiracy existed. We now know that Oswald was a US intelligence asset who had worked for both the CIA and FBI and that both agencies lied to the Warren Commission about their previous knowledge of him and his activities. Important to note are the systematic seizing of witnesses whose testimony bolstered the Commission’s conclusions while at the same time ignoring multiple witnesses who contradicted the Commission’s version of events. These witnesses provided evidence additional to the fingerprint evidence which tied Johnson’s gunman Wallace to the crime, i.e. multiple witnesses described a man who fit the description of Wallace, heavyset, and bespeckled, wearing a brown sports coat. It adds to the evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the shooter from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building; Malcolm Wallace, LBJ’s longtime hitman, was.

all good propagandists must, convincing the world that their version of reality was reasonable and their opponents’ version biased.

Find

Kelly and I saw a future (otherwise known as the sixth grade) in which we would remain invisible and unchanged while around us other girls suddenly bloomed. In Kelly's version, the girls burst, blousy peonies after the first hot summer night. In mine, after seven days and seven nights of rain, these girls became dandelions while we remained green clumps of crabgrass. Kelly and I knew what we needed. Lips that looked pink, wet, and just licked. Sally Campbell's lips had started to look that way at the beginning of fifth grade. Sally was pretty, and pretty girls were always ahead of the rest of us. Sally's lips and also her mouth smelled of strawberry bubblegum. Kelly and I were jealous of both the shine and the scent. In order to make us feel better, I told Kelly that the word "Sally" tasted of pumpkins, without the brown sugar or the cinnamon. Just a squash. Sally, nonetheless, set the example for us. Lips that could be seen from across the classroom we understood were desirable, and gloss for them has to be our first acquisition. Kelly begged her mother, Beth Anne, and then resorted to a promise of future weight loss for a shade of pink called Flamingo Paradise, which Beth Anne picked out for her. Beth Anne, at the time, didn't pay attention to Kelly. Beth Anne completely ignored the fact that her only daughter had asked her for lip gloss, strawberry-bubblegum-flavored. Flamingo Paradise was lipstick, the kind that my grandmother Iris wore. It went on creamy but soon became cracked and dry. The only flavor it gave to our lips was something that also belonged to Iris: talcum powder mixed with a crushed vanilla cream wafer.

Pissenlit (DANDELION SALAD) YIELD: 4 SERVINGS PISSENLIT, as the common dandelion is often called in France, is considered a great early-spring treat in our family. Gloria loves to pick the greens at the end of March and the beginning of April, especially the small white specimens hidden in the fallen leaves behind our guesthouse. This family tradition started for me with my father and my two brothers, and now my wife and daughter, Claudine, are great lovers of pissenlit salad. The leaves should be picked before the flowers start forming, while they are small, white, and tender. There is no comparison between the tender wild dandelion greens you pick yourself and the ones that are found in markets. With a small paring knife, cut about an inch below the ground to get the dandelion plant in one piece. Cut the leaves away from the root, and discard any that are damaged or darkened. Our version always includes pieces of pancetta as well as croutons, boiled eggs with soft yolks, and a dressing made of garlic, anchovies, and olive oil. 4 large eggs 5 ounces pancetta, cut into pieces about 1 inch long, ½ inch wide, and ½ inch thick (about 2 dozen) 2 cups water 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 teaspoons chopped garlic 4 anchovy fillets in oil, finely chopped 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper A piece of baguette (about 3 ounces), cut into sixteen ¼-inch slices About 8 ounces (8 cups packed) dandelion greens, washed two or three times and spun dry Lower the eggs carefully into boiling water, and boil them at a simmer for 7 minutes. Pour out the water, shake the pan to crack the shells, then fill the pan with ice, and let the eggs cool in the pan for at least 15 minutes. Peel the eggs under cold running water, and cut them into quarters. Meanwhile, put the pancetta pieces in a saucepan, and cover them with the water. Bring the water to a boil, and boil gently for 10 minutes. Drain, then put the pancetta in a saucepan with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Cook gently for 5 minutes, or until crisp and lightly browned. Transfer the pancetta along with the rendered fat to a salad bowl, and add the garlic, anchovies, vinegar, salt, pepper, and 4 tablespoons of the olive oil. Mix well. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spread the remaining 1 tablespoon oil on a cookie sheet, press the slices of bread into the oil, and then turn them over, so they are oiled on the second side. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until nicely browned. At serving time, add the greens to the salad bowl, and toss them with the dressing. Divide among four plates, and top with the bread and quartered eggs. Serve.

A stronger analogy to Eisenstein's analysis of the rising pattern in the music and the visuals can be found in the contrapuntal practice in music whereby a theme is juxtaposed against either an augmented (the note values are doubled) or diminished (the note values are halved) version of itself. The listener can thus simultaneously experience two different temporal elaborations of the same melodic line across a single block of chronological time, just as the viewer/listener in Alexander Nevsky can experience two different temporal elaborations of the rising motion across a single block of chronological time. (Needless to say, an oppositional "counterpoint" could also be set up by creating, for instance, an upward movement in the music and a downward one in the visuals.) But the experience here is doubly enriched, since the simultaneity also includes two different modes of perception, visual and aural, which is, one suspects, one of the underlying raisons d'être of the gesamtkunstwerk. Even on the simplest of levels, then, Eisenstein's "vertical montage" involves the simultaneous, layered presentation of a number of different elements. For the first shot, these layers would stack up as follows: 1. Graphic perception (photography) 2. Musical perception (score) 3. Upward movement 1 (graphic) 4. Upward movement 2 (musical) 5. Synchronicity 1 (graphic) 6. Synchronicity 2 (musical)

Then I felt a sharp pain in my stomach. I pulled away from Adam and looked down to see my own diamond sword buried in my belly. “I’m sorry,” Adam said, standing up with a grim look on his face. “But you gave me no choice.” I looked up at Adam, who looked down at me with eyes full of hate. “You, Dave and all your friends are all the same,” he said. “You’re just trying to ruin my life! I never asked for any of this—I was just trying to protect my wife!” He grabbed the hilt of his sword and pulled it out of me in one swift motion. And everything went black. ??????? I dreamed of time: of the first burst of light that emerged from the Void; the plants and trees that spread across the land; the first animals that roamed the world in peace; the rise of the Old People and their eventual fall into darkness, and the monsters that took their place when they were gone; the villagers who followed in the Old People’s place. All of time passed before my eyes, and it was glorious. Glorious and terrifying. I saw a thousand versions of myself, stretching back to the beginning of the world. Each was a man in blue clothes with brown hair. All the Steves who had lived and died: all my previous lives. “I want to wake up,” I told them. “I need to go back.” “You will,” they replied. “Although you will be changed. That cannot be helped.” And then a wind swept me up; up towards the light.  And I screamed… THURSDAY I jolted awake in bed. “What was that?” I said. “Some kind of a nightmare?

Just because they were homey didn't mean they were ordinary. Most versions of this recipe relied on butterscotch chips, waxy little chunks of hydrogenated oil and synthetic butterscotch flavor. Bev's used malted milk powder and a truckload of butter, relying on the interaction between the oven's heat and the milk powder to give that toasty, caramelized flavor that suggested rather than screamed butterscotch. Melody's version also subbed brown sugar for some of the white with a healthy shot of molasses to add a deep, earthy note. At the last moment, she added some chopped hazelnuts from a little glass jar in the cabinet for extra texture and flavor. Thoughts of Justin faded as she mixed and spread the batter, then slid the shallow jelly roll pan into the oven where it would bake into a sheet of butterscotchy, nutty deliciousness. When it came out dozens of minutes later, fragrant and golden brown, she inhaled the aroma, basking in her sense of accomplishment at a perfect result. There was nothing like taking basic ingredients and transforming them into something both beautiful and tasty.

Saint Peter could get rid of his little black book with the names of the worthy written in it. Aunt Gert would arrive with a new and updated version tucked under her arm.

Tragically, on account of religious dogma, millions of people believe they already know the answers to these big questions. And because not every religion offers the same answers, entire cultures end up warring over whose answers are correct, and which version of God’s story is the One True Story.

The fish vendor had delivered a sea of heavenly delights. Les gambas, large shrimp, were the size of my hand. Once cooked, they'd be lovely and pink. The oysters were enormous and beautiful, the briny scent conjuring up the sea. I couldn't remember the last time I'd swum in open water. Six years ago on a Sunday trip to the Hamptons with Eric? Oh God, I didn't want to think about him. Besides the work of shucking more than three hundred of them, oysters were easy. They'd be served raw with a mignonette sauce and lemons, along with crayfish, crab, and shrimp, accompanied by a saffron-infused aioli dipping sauce. I lifted the top of another crate, and fifty or so lobsters with spiny backs greeted me- beautiful and big, and the top portion freckled by the sea. I loved working with lobster, the way their color changed from mottled brown and orange to a fiery red when cooked. I'd use the tails for le plat principal, flambéed in cognac and simmered in a spicy tomato- my version of my grandmother's recipe for langouste à la armoricaine. The garnish? A sprig of fresh rosemary. The other crates were filled with lovely mussels, scallops, whelks, and smoked salmon filets, along with another surprise- escargots. Save for the snails, this meal would be a true seafood extravaganza.

Wood is Brown University’s Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University and, according to the Wall Street Journal, has been called the “dean of 18th-century American historians.” He has accumulated “virtually every award available to historians,” including the Bancroft Prize, Pulitzer, and the National Humanities Medal in 2010.30 But Howard Zinn simply dismisses Wood’s work as the “Great Man” version of history, in contrast to his own “people’s” history.31 One wonders if he read the page on which Wood describes the “ ‘carpenters, shoemakers, Blacksmiths’ ” who demanded a place on revolutionary committees.

Fideos secos, also known as sopa seca or Mexican “dry soup,” is typically made with thin spaghetti cooked in a guajillo pepper and tomato sauce, topped with avocado, queso fresco, and sometimes chicharrón (fried pork rinds). This grain-free version replaces the pasta with carrots—and I have to say, they just might be the tastiest carrots I’ve ever eaten (and this is coming from a girl who doesn’t really like carrots). Spiralized carrots are great as a pasta swap in dishes like this where you want a noodle with a good bite. Zucchini tends to get watery if cooked too long, but the carrots stay firm, creating a very pasta-like experience. 1 large (13-ounce) carrot (at least 2 inches thick) 2 dried guajillo chiles,* stemmed, split open, and seeded 4 teaspoons olive oil ⅓ cup chopped onion 3 garlic cloves 2 medium tomatoes, quartered 1 teaspoon adobo sauce (from a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce) ½ teaspoon ground cumin ¾ teaspoon kosher salt 4 ounces thinly sliced avocado (from 1 small Hass) 2 ounces (scant ½ cup) crumbled queso fresco 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro *Read the label to be sure this product is gluten-free. Using the widest noodle blade of your spiralizer, spiralize the carrot, then cut the “noodles” into 6-inch lengths. Set aside on a plate. Soak the guajillo chiles in a bowl of ½ cup hot water until softened, about 30 minutes. Transfer the chiles and soaking liquid to a blender. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1 teaspoon of the oil, the onion, and garlic and cook, stirring, until the onion is golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer the mixture to the blender. Add the tomatoes, adobo sauce, cumin, and ¼ teaspoon of the salt to the blender and blend well. In the same skillet, heat the remaining 3 teaspoons oil over medium-high heat. Add the carrot noodles and the remaining ½ teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Pour the sauce from the blender over the carrots, increase the heat to high, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. To serve, divide the carrot noodles between 2 bowls. Top each with half the avocado, queso fresco, and cilantro.

After a few millennia of inspiration, the primitive clay oven gave rise to the gleaming modern steel version. A high-tech oven alone does not, however, turn a bake-mete into a pie as we know it. One more important development was necessary. Pastry had to be invented.

Lovely and slender, with light-brown hair and hazel eyes, she was well known for her intelligence and quick wit, all qualities that had been whittled away with age to reveal a shrunken version of herself.

Alain de Botton: And there are areas like self-confidence, you know the placebo effect, there is this capacity to give people confidence, they didn’t know they had. How does that work, how can you make someone more confident? Derren Brown: I think stories are very interesting in life and very important in life. And if you go and see a film and it says at the beginning: “based on a true story” you know when you see those words that what you are going to see is not a perfect telling of the events that happened; you’re going to see a neatened version with a beginning, middle and an end. Perhaps some characters might sort of conflated into one and there will be a clear hero and the rest of it, so you have the natural sort of scepticism that comes into play. Likewise if somebody tells you a story of what happened the other night or an argument they got into or some outrageous behaviour … you know there’s another side to that story. You apply a natural sort of scepticism. We very rarely think of applying the same scepticism to ourselves and the stories that we tell ourselves about our own lives, which of course are the most important stories that we have. And I did a program on placebo where we set up a whole elaborate thing to make people think they were getting a super drug that would do various things depending on the group they’re in, so there was one group, they were told “removes the experience of fear” and so the other group was told that it would stop them smoking and so on. And it was really interesting to me, because what it became clear is that irrespective of what group it is whether it’s about smoking or people with terrible crippling anxieties, or allergies - was another one that responded very well to it- that these things are really tied in with the stories we tell ourselves and if you give yourself permission or sometimes, it’s easier if someone gives you permission, to just change the story, to act out of character, to act as if the thing is no longer a problem, it’s a very simple shift, and with that the people that give up smoking in an instant, and never go back to it, never have any trouble with it, other people decide I am gonna be a non-smoker, so they change their story, they change that sort of identity, that label as opposed to “alright I must not smoke, I must try not to smoke” which of course is stressful and you fail, you give up and when you do eventually have one they are “I failed, it’s all gone wrong. ” Magic is about stories we tell ourselves.

Worrying about scarcity is our culture’s version of post-traumatic stress.

While I waited for Eli, I contemplated my eggs and bacon for a couple of minutes, and then got up and threw the contents of my breakfast tray into the garbage. Something inside the trash can growled, and I realized too late that I’d forgotten to sort out my silverware. A moment later the fork came hurtling out of the can like a missile and whacked me in the forehead. “Hey,” I said as I rubbed my stinging skin. Good thing I hadn’t used a knife this morning. A head covered in scraggly brown hair emerged over the top of the can. The trash troll fixed a glare at me with its huge black eyes. It looked like a really ugly, twisted version of a Mr. Potato Head with a head and torso twice as long as its stubby legs and arms. It bared its teeth at me, mumbling incoherent words. It dawned on me that I was being scolded. By a trash troll. Glaring, I shooed at it. “Go on, get back in there. It was just an accident.” The troll muttered something more then stuck its tongue out at me before disappearing. I backed away from the trash can, on the lookout for more projectiles. It seemed even the trash trolls had developed their own spirit of rebellion, same as us students.

Cherry Cream Cheese Surprise Recipe   Ingredients: From Scratch Pie Crust: (8 or 9 inch pie crust) 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon shortening (Crisco) OR 1/3 cup lard 1 cup all-purpose flour ½ teaspoon salt 2 to 3 tablespoons cold water Steps: Cut shortening into flour and salt until particles are the size of small peas.  Sprinkle in water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork until all flour is moistened and pastry almost cleans side of bowl (1 to 2 tablespoons water can be added, if needed.) Gather pastry into a ball.  Flatten the ball on a lightly floured cloth-covered board. (A hard, floured surface will also work.) Roll pastry 2 inches larger than inverted pie plate using floured rolling pin.  (Note: I use a lightly floured spatula to loosen the piecrust from the surface.) Fold pastry into quarters, unfold and ease into lightly greased pie plate, pressing firmly against bottom and sides of plate.  Trim overhang excess and then press fork tines along rim of pie plate.  Cream Cheese Layer: 8 ounces whipped cream cheese ½ cup white sugar ½ tsp. vanilla extract Mix ingredients and spread on the bottom and sides of the piecrust. Mix 1 tablespoon brown sugar and ½ teaspoon cinnamon together and sprinkle over top of cream cheese mixture.   PREHEAT OVEN TO 375 DEGREES. Cherry Pie Filling: 4 cups fresh or frozen cherries, thawed (if frozen, make sure to drain juice after thawing) ¾ cup sugar 3 tbsp cornstarch or Mix ingredients and pour on top of cream cheese/brown sugar and cinnamon mixture. Topping: 2/3 cup packed brown sugar ½ cup all-purpose flour ½ cup oats ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon ¾ teaspoon ground nutmeg ½ cup margarine or butter, softened Mix ingredients and sprinkle over top of cherry mixture.   Bake 30 minutes at 375 degrees.  *For a quicker, easier version, substitute with a refrigerated (ready-to-bake) pie crust and 2 cans of cherry pie filling. *Serve warm with ice cream…or eat a piece for breakfast with a fresh cup of coffee .

As Regina McGowan pulled her silver Volvo SUV into the driveway in front of the huge, farmhouse-style home, all Megan could see was boys. Boys everywhere. All seven of them plus their dad, running and laughing and shoving each other around on the front lawn, engaged in what appeared to be a full-contact, tackle version of ultimate Frisbee. They were playing shirts and skins. Shirts and mighty-fine-lookin’ skins. Megan’s pulse pounded in her ears. Forget evil, laughing little monsters. These guys had been touched by the Abercrombie gods. They were a blur of toned, suntanned perfection. For a few seconds, Megan had trouble focusing on any one of them, but then one of the skins scored a goal and jumped up, arms thrust in the air, whooping in triumph as he clutched the Frisbee in one hand. His six-pack abs were dotted with sweat and a couple of stray pieces of torn grass. His smile sent shivers right through Megan’s core. He had shaggy blond hair, a square chin, and the most perfect shoulder muscles Megan had ever seen. One of his brothers slapped him on the back and pointed toward the Volvo. He turned around and looked right at Megan. The rest of the world ceased to exist. “Well, here we are,” Regina said, killing the engine. “Megan?” He smiled slowly--a perfect, open, happy smile. “Megan?” Something touched Megan’s arm. “Oh! Uh…yeah?” Megan whipped her eyes away from Mr. Perfection and blushed. Regina’s brown eyes twinkled with amusement and sympathy. “You can live in the car if you want to, but they’ll find a way to get to you anyway.” “Oh…uh…” God, did she just catch me drooling all over one of her kids? Gross! “Don’t worry. They promised me they would be on their best behavior,” Regina said, unbuckling her seat belt. She swung her long dark hair over her shoulder as she got out of the car and leaned down to look at Megan. “My advice? Just be yourself. I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Megan managed to smile and Regina slammed the car door. Be myself. Yeah. Right. Because that’s gotten me so far in the past.

It seems we do a lot of fighting over God. Everyone has a different version of the truth.

Once the apartment was ready, Portia had begun to plan out what foods they would showcase in this little glimpse into a Glass Kitchen world. Her sisters couldn't help her with this part. Portia had let go, and dishes had come to her, all of which she wrote down and prepared to make. Then, at eight that morning, she got to work. Olivia and Cordelia served as sous-chefs; they started by making a decadent beef bourguignon. Olivia and Cordelia washed and chopped as Portia browned layer after layer of beef, bacon, carrots, and onion, folding in the beef stock and wine, then putting it in to slow bake as they dove into the remaining dishes. They opened all the windows and ran four swiveling fans Portia had bought and found that pushed the scent of the baking and cooking out onto the sidewalk. Then they had put up a fairly discreet sign in the window, hand-painted by Olivia: THE GLASS KITCHEN. Portia had gotten the idea while walking down Broadway and passing the French soap store. Scents had spilled into the street from the shop- lavender and primrose, musk and sandalwood- luring passersby inside. Portia had realized that the best way to get investors interested was to show them a version of The Glass Kitchen. The food. The aromas. She had realized, standing there on Broadway, that she needed to create a mini version of her grandmother's restaurant to lure people in.

All places, all airs, make unto me one Countrey; I am in England every where, and under any Meridian. I have been shipwrackt, yet am not enemy with the Sea or Winds; I can study, play, or sleep in a Tempest. In brief, I am averse from nothing:

Skippy, you little fool, you are off on another of your senseless and retrograde journeys. Come back here, to the points. Here is where the paths divided. See the man back there. He is wearing a white hood. His shoes are brown. He has a nice smile, but nobody sees it. Nobody sees it because his face is always in the dark. But he is a nice man. He is the pointsman. He is called that because he throws the lever that changes the points. And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. Or "Der Lied-Stadt," that's what the Germans call it. There is a mean poem about the Lied-Stadt, by a German man named Mr. Rilke. But we will not read it, because WE are going to Happyville. The pointsman has made sure we'll go there. He hardly has to work at all. The lever is very smooth, and easy to push. Even you could push it, Skippy. If you knew where it was. But look what a lot of work he has done, with just one little push. He has sent us all the way to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. That is because he knows just where the points and the lever are. He is the only kind of man who puts in very little work and makes big things happen, all over the world. He could have sent you on the right trip back there, Skippy. You can have YOUR fantasy if you want, you probably don't deserve anything better, but Mister Information tonight is in a kind mood. He will show you Happyville. He will begin by reminding you of the 1937 Ford. Why is that dacoit-faced auto still on the roads? You said "the War," just as you rattled over the points onto the wrong track. The War WAS the set of points. Eh? Yesyes, Skippy, the truth is that the War is keeping things alive. THINGS. The Ford is only one of them. The Germans-and-Japs story was only one, rather surrealistic version of the real War. The real War is always there. The dying tapers off now and then, but the War is still killing lots and lots of people. Only right now it is killing them in more subtle ways. Often in ways that are too complicated, even for us, at this level, to trace. But the right people are dying, just as they do when armies fight. The ones who stand up, in Basic, in the middle of the machine-gun pattern. The ones who do not have faith in their Sergeants. The ones who slip and show a moment's weakness to the Enemy. These are the ones the War cannot use, and so they die. The right ones survive. The others, it's said, even KNOW they have a short life expectancy. But they persist in acting the way they do. Nobody knows why. Wouldn't it be nice if we could eliminate them completely? Then no one would have to be killed in the War. That would be fun, wouldn't it, Skippy?

Marjan's heart quickened as she browned the ground meat and onions together over the low, dancing flame. The satisfied pan hissed as she introduced dried versions of her precious herbs, the only sort she had been able to buy at such late notice. Even in Iran, there had been times when Marjan had had to resort to cooking 'dolmeh' with dried herbs. By soaking them overnight, she had discovered, they worked almost as well as their fresher relatives. Using her entire torso, Marjan mixed the herbs with the cooked rice, fresh lime juice, salt and pepper.

We feel admiration when someone’s abilities, accomplishments, or character inspires us, or when we see something else that inspires us, like art or nature. Interestingly, admiration often leads to us wanting to improve ourselves. It doesn’t, however, make us want to be like the person or thing we admire—we just want to be better versions of ourselves.

even though Black and brown people are disproportionately poor, white Americans constitute the majority of low-income people who escape poverty because of government safety net programs. Nonetheless, the idea that Black people are the “takers” in society while white people are the hardworking taxpayers—the “makers”—has become a core part of the zero-sum story preached by wealthy political elites. Whether it’s the more subtle “47 percent” version from millionaire Mitt Romney or the more racially explicit Fox News version sponsored by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, it works. In 2016, the majority of white moderates (53 percent) and white conservatives (69 percent) said that Black Americans take more than we give to society. We take more than we give.

How often do parents nostalgically reflect on their children when they were younger? It is easy to look at photographs and miss those cute, plump-faced, miniature versions of the gawky and resentful specimens they have become.

The woman crossed the beach toward him with an easy, energetic stride. As she approached, he saw she was beautiful, with heavy dark hair, an oval face, and merry brown eyes. She was an elongated, less bosomy version of Merritt, as if someone had carefully stretched her about five inches north and south. Lady Westcliff, he thought, and a blaze of embarrassment raced over him. "Is that a signal fire?" she called out in a breezy manner, her accent distinctly American. "Are you in need of a rescue?" She had Merritt's smile, the one that started with a little crinkle of her nose and made her eyes tip-tilted. Keir's trepidation began to fade. "Aye," he said, "but I'm no' sure what from yet.