Threat Good Morning Quotes

His master plan to get them all out the door early met its first check of the day when he opened his closet door to discover that Zap the Cat, having penetrated the security of Vorkosigan House through Miles's quisling cook, had made a nest on the floor among his boots and fallen clothing to have kittens. Six of them. Zap ignored his threats about the dire consequences of attacking an Imperial Auditor, and purred and growled from the dimness in her usual schizophrenic fashion. Miles gathered his nerve and rescued his best boots and House uniform, at a cost of some high Vor blood, and sent them downstairs for a hasty cleaning by the overworked Armsman Pym. The Countess, delighted as ever to find her biological empire increasing, came in thoughtfully bearing a cat-gourmet tray prepared by Ma Kosti that Miles would have had no hesitation in eating for his own breakfast. In the general chaos of the morning, however, he had to go down to the kitchen and scrounge his meal. The Countess sat on the floor and cooed into his closet for a good half-hour, and not only escaped laceration, but managed to pick up, sex, and name the whole batch of little squirming furballs before tearing herself away to hurry and dress.

THE SHEEPDOGS Most humans truly are like sheep Wanting nothing more than peace to keep To graze, grow fat and raise their young, Sweet taste of clover on the tongue. Their lives serene upon Life’s farm, They sense no threat nor fear no harm. On verdant meadows, they forage free With naught to fear, with naught to flee. They pay their sheepdogs little heed For there is no threat; there is no need. To the flock, sheepdog’s are mysteries, Roaming watchful round the peripheries. These fang-toothed creatures bark, they roar With the fetid reek of the carnivore, Too like the wolf of legends told, To be amongst our docile fold. Who needs sheepdogs? What good are they? They have no use, not in this day. Lock them away, out of our sight We have no need of their fierce might. But sudden in their midst a beast Has come to kill, has come to feast The wolves attack; they give no warning Upon that calm September morning They slash and kill with frenzied glee Their passive helpless enemy Who had no clue the wolves were there Far roaming from their Eastern lair. Then from the carnage, from the rout, Comes the cry, “Turn the sheepdogs out!” Thus is our nature but too our plight To keep our dogs on leashes tight And live a life of illusive bliss Hearing not the beast, his growl, his hiss. Until he has us by the throat, We pay no heed; we take no note. Not until he strikes us at our core Will we unleash the Dogs of War Only having felt the wolf pack’s wrath Do we loose the sheepdogs on its path. And the wolves will learn what we’ve shown before; We love our sheep, we Dogs of War. Russ Vaughn 2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment 101st Airborne Division Vietnam 65-66

Whoever is in charge of such things had been sparing with his blessings on the moment Benno was born. He had neither looks nor wit nor skill. He was not large or strong, he could not sing; in fact, he had a stammer, which on most occasions left him self-consciously mute. One gift only had been given, a gift as simple as it is rare: the gift of pure goodness. He knew, unerringly, what was right, what was kind, what would make people happy, and he did it without fail. His goodness took no effort; there was no internal scale to be balanced. He hoped for no reward and feared no hell. He was not clever- in his final year of school before the teachers despaired of him, he was asked how he would equitably divide a half-pound loaf of bread among himself and two friends. He said he would go without and his two friends would each have a quarter pound, and neither threats of failure nor the switch could persuade him to change his answer.

Whoever is in charge of such things had been sparing with his blessings on the moment Benno was born. He had neither looks nor wit nor skill. He was not large or strong, he could not sing; in fact, he had a stammer, which on most occasions left him self-consciously mute. One gift only had been given, a gift as simple as it is rare: the gift of pure goodness. He knew, unerringly, what was right, what was kind, what would make people happy, and he did it without fail. His goodness took no effort; there was no internal scale to be balanced. He hoped for no reward and feared no hell. He was not clever- in his final year of school before the teachers despaired of him, he was asked how he would equitably divide a half-pound loaf of bread among himself and two friends. He said he would go without and his two friends would each have a quarter pound, and neither threats of failure not the switch could persuade him to change his answer.

First, we need to remember that, according to Kelly McGonigal in The Upside of Stress, how we perceive stress is actually the largest determinant of how it affects us. In short: If you think life is challenging you to step up and give your best, you’ll use that energy to do your best and feel energized. If, on the other hand, you think life is threatening you and your well-being, that stress will erode your health and you’ll feel enervated. Part I check in… How are YOU perceiving the stressors in your life? As threats or as challenges? Choose wisely. Now for Part II. In addition to reframing your perspective on stress, here’s a somewhat paradoxical way to alleviate any potential chronic stress: increase your levels of acute, short-term stress. Two ways to do that: physical exercise and short-term projects. For a variety of reasons, engaging in an intense little workout is one of the best ways to mitigate any lingering, chronic stress you may be experiencing. And, remember: If you’re NOT exercising, you’re effectively taking a “Stress Pill” every morning. Not a good idea. Deliberately “stress” your body with a quick, acute bout of physical stress (a.k.a. a workout!) and voilà. You made a dent in your chronic stress. Do that habitually and you might just wipe it out. Then we have short-term projects as a means to mitigate chronic stress. Feeling stressed about something at work (or life)? Get busy on a short-term project with a well-defined, doable near-term goal. Create some opportunities for small wins. Celebrate them. Repeat.

Oh, good. I was worried you’d taken ill.” “Why?” Elizabeth asked as she took a sip of the chocolate. It was cold as ice! “Because I couldn’t wake-“ “What time is it?” Elizabeth cried. “Nearly eleven.” “Eleven! But I told you to wake me at eight! How could you let me oversleep this way?” she said, her sleep-drugged mind already groping wildly for a solution. She could dress quickly and catch up with everyone. Or… “I did try,” Berta exclaimed, hurt by the uncharacteristic sharpness in Elizabeth’s tone, “but you didn’t want to wake up.” “I never want to awaken, Berta, you know that!” “But you were worse this morning than normal. You said your head ached.” “I always say things like that. I don’t know what I’m saying when I’m asleep. I’ll say anything to bargain for a few minutes’ more sleep. You’ve known that for years, and you always shake me awake anyway.” “But you said,” Berta persisted, tugging unhappily a her apron, “that since it rained so much last night you were sure the trip to the village wouldn’t take place, so you didn’t have to arise at all.” “Berta, for heaven’s sake!” Elizabeth cried, throwing off the covers and jumping out of bed with more energy than she’d ever shown after such a short period of wakefulness. “I’ve told you I’m dying of diphtheria to make you go away, and that didn’t succeed!” “Well,” Berta shot back, marching over to the bell pull and ringing for a bath to be brought up, “when you told me that, your face wasn’t pale and your head didn’t feel hot to my touch. And you hadn’t dragged yourself into bed as if you could hardly stand when it was half past one in the morning!” Contrite, Elizabeth slumped down in the bed. “It’s not your fault that I sleep like a hibernating bear. And besides, if they didn’t go to the village, it makes no difference at all that I overslept.” She was trying to resign herself to the notion of spending the day in the house with a man who could look at her across a roomful of diners and make her heart leap when Berta said, “They did go to the village. Last night’s storm was more noise and threat than rain.” Closing her eyes for a brief moment, Elizabeth emitted a long sigh. It was already eleven, which meant Ian had already begun his useless vigil at the cottage.

The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It’s so powerful because it’s unconscious. It’s not like they get together every morning and decide ‘These are the lies we tell today.’ No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it’s a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they’ve never really experienced that’s arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they’ve chosen to live their lives. It’s a way of arranging things a certain way that they all believe in without ever really addressing carefully. It permeates their whole culture. They know, for example, that Bush is a moron and Obama a saint. They know communism was a phony threat cooked up by right-wing cranks as a way to leverage power to the executive. They know Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, the response to Katrina was fucked up, torture never works, and mad Vietnam sniper Carl Hitchcock killed the saintly peace demonstrators. Cheney’s a devil, Biden’s a genius. Soft power good,

A good campaign usually deploys multiple tactics: paid media (TV ads, digital ads, radio ads, print ads), earned media (which is just jargon for public relations), opposition research (a euphemism for digging up dirt on someone), field (canvassing, door knocking, flyers, lit drops, posters, phone calls), lobbying (personal connections in one way or another), and today, perhaps more than anything else, social media. We went at it on every front. I convened a meeting of our senior team every morning at 8 a.m. to discuss what we could to do to drive Anthony from the race. Here’s the best of what we did: Earned media: I kicked things off by saying, on the front page of the New York Times, that if Anthony ran, I’d add an extra $20 million to our campaign budget to ensure that we destroyed his reputation so thoroughly, he’d never be able to run for anything ever again. In retrospect, the threat probably landed harder than I realized because Anthony was already starting to self-destruct. (It wasn’t like what he got caught doing on Twitter didn’t exist in other, pre-Twitter formats before then.) We started exactly where anyone would when it comes to Anthony Weiner: sex. In his time as a member of the House, Anthony had passed all of one bill. And that one illustrious piece of legislation was to give more visas to models. Yep, protecting the rights of hot women was Anthony’s sole achievement in office. That was a good point to make but not an exposé in and of itself. But then our research team noticed something: Anthony had also received campaign contributions from many of the models who received highly coveted H1B visas. Not only was this pay-to-play (give contributions, get government favors), it was illegal.

He did not know that they were people, nor that he was a bear. Indeed, he did not know that he existed at all: everything that is represented by the words I and Me and Thou was absent from his mind. When Mrs. Maggs gave him a tin of golden syrup, as she did every Sunday morning, he did not recognize either a giver or a recipient. Goodness occurred and he tasted it. And that was all. Hence his loves might, if you wished, be all described as cupboard loves: food and warmth, hands that caressed, voices that reassured, were their objects. But if by a cupboard love you meant something cold or calculating you would be quite misunderstanding the real quality of the beast’s sensations. He was no more like a human egoist than he was like a human altruist. There was no prose in his life. The appetencies which a human mind might disdain as cupboard loves were for him quivering and ecstatic aspirations which absorbed his whole being, infinite yearnings, stabbed with the threat of tragedy and shot through with the color of Paradise. One of our race, if plunged back for a moment in the warm, trembling, iridescent pool of that pre-Adamite consciousness, would have emerged believing that he had grasped the absolute: for the states below reason and the states above it have, by their common contrast to the life we know, a certain superficial resemblance. Sometimes there returns to us from infancy the memory of a nameless delight or terror, unattached to any delightful or dreadful thing, a potent adjective floating in a nounless void, a pure quality. At such moments we have experience of the shallows of that pool. But fathoms deeper than any memory can take us, right down in the central warmth and dimness, the bear lived all its life.

told my people that I wanted only the best, whatever it took, wherever they came from, whatever it cost. We assembled thirty people, the brightest cybersecurity minds we have. A few are on loan, pursuant to strict confidentiality agreements, from the private sector—software companies, telecommunications giants, cybersecurity firms, military contractors. Two are former hackers themselves, one of them currently serving a thirteen-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Most are from various agencies of the federal government—Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA. Half our team is devoted to threat mitigation—how to limit the damage to our systems and infrastructure after the virus hits. But right now, I’m concerned with the other half, the threat-response team that Devin and Casey are running. They’re devoted to stopping the virus, something they’ve been unable to do for the last two weeks. “Good morning, Mr. President,” says Devin Wittmer. He comes from NSA. After graduating from Berkeley, he started designing cyberdefense software for clients like Apple before the NSA recruited him away. He has developed federal cybersecurity assessment tools to help industries and governments understand their preparedness against cyberattacks. When the major health-care systems in France were hit with a ransomware virus three years ago, we lent them Devin, who was able to locate and disable it. Nobody in America, I’ve been assured, is better at finding holes in cyberdefense systems or at plugging them. “Mr. President,” says Casey Alvarez. Casey is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Arizona to start a family and built up a fleet of grocery stores in the Southwest along the way. Casey showed no interest in the business, taking quickly to computers and wanting to join law enforcement. When she was a grad student at Penn, she got turned down for a position at the Department of Justice. So Casey got on her computer and managed to do what state and federal authorities had been unable to do for years—she hacked into an underground child-pornography website and disclosed the identities of all the website’s patrons, basically gift-wrapping a federal prosecution for Justice and shutting down an operation that was believed to be the largest purveyor of kiddie porn in the country. DOJ hired her on the spot, and she stayed there until she went to work for the CIA. She’s been most recently deployed in the Middle East with US Central Command, where she intercepts, decodes, and disrupts cybercommunications among terrorist groups. I’ve been assured that these two are, by far, the best we have. And they are about to meet the person who, so far, has been better. There is a hint of reverence in their expressions as I introduce them to Augie. The Sons of Jihad is the all-star team of cyberterrorists, mythical figures in that world. But I sense some competitive fire, too, which will be a good thing.

Here is my six step process for how we will first start with ISIS and then build an international force that will fight terrorism and corruption wherever it appears. “First, in dedication to Lieutenant Commander McKay, Operation Crapshoot commenced at six o’clock this morning. I’ve directed a handpicked team currently deployed in Iraq to coordinate a tenfold increase in aerial bombing and close air support. In addition to aerial support, fifteen civilian security companies, including delegations from our international allies, are flying special operations veterans into Iraq. Those forces will be tasked with finding and annihilating ISIS, wherever they walk, eat or sleep. I’ve been told that they can’t wait to get started. “Second, going forward, our military will be a major component in our battle against evil. Militaries need training. I’ve been assured by General McMillan and his staff that there is no better final training test than live combat. So without much more expenditure, we will do two things, train our troops of the future, and wipe out international threats. “Third, I have a message for our allies. If you need us, we will be there. If evil raises its ugly head, we will be with you, arm in arm, fighting for what is right. But that aid comes with a caveat. Our allies must be dedicated to the common global ideals of personal and religious freedom. Any supposed ally who ignores these terms will find themselves without impunity. A criminal is a criminal. A thief is a thief. Decide which side you’re on, because our side carries a big stick. “Fourth, to the religious leaders of the world, especially those of Islam, though we live with differing traditions, we are still one people on this Earth. What one person does always has the possibility of affecting others. If you want to be part of our community, it is time to do your part. Denounce the criminals who besmirch your faith. Tell your followers the true meaning of the Koran. Do not let the money and influence of hypocrites taint your religion or your people. We request that you do this now, respectfully, or face the scrutiny of America and our allies. “Fifth, starting today, an unprecedented coalition of three former American presidents, my predecessor included, will travel around the globe to strengthen our alliances. Much like our brave military leaders, we will lead from the front, go where we are needed. We will go toe to toe with any who would seek to undermine our good intentions, and who trample the freedoms of our citizens. In the coming days you will find out how great our resolve truly is. “Sixth, my staff is in the process of drafting a proposal for the members of the United Nations. The proposal will outline our recommendations for the formation of an international terrorism strike force along with an international tax that will fund ongoing anti-terrorism operations. Only the countries that contribute to this fund will be supported by the strike force. You pay to play.

On the first day of the meeting that would become known as the United States Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph of Virginia kicked off the proceedings. Addressing his great fellow Virginian General George Washington, victorious hero of the War of Independence, who sat in the chair, Randolph hoped to convince delegates sent by seven, so far, of the thirteen states, with more on the way, to abandon the confederation formed by the states that had sent them—the union that had declared American independence from England and won the war—and to replace it with another form of government. “Our chief danger,” Randolph announced, “arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions.” This was in May of 1787, in Philadelphia, in the same ground-floor room of the Pennsylvania State House, borrowed from the Pennsylvania assembly, where in 1776 the Continental Congress had declared independence. Others in the room already agreed with Randolph: James Madison, also of Virginia; Robert Morris of Pennsylvania; Gouverneur Morris of New York and Pennsylvania; Alexander Hamilton of New York; Washington. They wanted the convention to institute a national government. As we know, their effort was a success. We often say the confederation was a weak government, the national government stronger. But the more important difference has to do with whom those governments acted on. The confederation acted on thirteen state legislatures. The nation would act on all American citizens, throughout all the states. That would be a mighty change. To persuade his fellow delegates to make it, Randolph was reeling off a list of what he said were potentially fatal problems, urgently in need, he said, of immediate repair. He reiterated what he called the chief threat to the country. “None of the constitutions”—he meant those of the states’ governments—“have provided sufficient checks against the democracy.” The term “democracy” could mean different things, sometimes even contradictory things, in 1787. People used it to mean “the mob,” which historians today would call “the crowd,” a movement of people denied other access to power, involving protest, riot, what recently has been called occupation, and often violence against people and property. But sometimes “democracy” just meant assertive lawmaking by a legislative body staffed by gentlemen highly sensitive to the desires of their genteel constituents. Men who condemned the working-class mob as a democracy sometimes prided themselves on being “democratical” in their own representative bodies. What Randolph meant that morning by “democracy” is clear. When he said “our chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions,” and “none of the constitutions have provided sufficient checks against the democracy,” he was speaking in a context of social and economic turmoil, pervading all thirteen states, which the other delegates were not only aware of but also had good reason to be urgently worried about. So familiar was the problem that Randolph would barely have had to explain it, and he didn’t explain it in detail. Yet he did say things whose context everyone there would already have understood.

had forced him to buy Exeltec from me for another exorbitant sum, so I came away from this in a good enough position. The CDC failed to find evidence that Panos had released any kind of pathogen, and eventually determined that the note on Panos’s computer had been an idle threat, meant to send I3 into a panic. Earlier that morning, Dion had sent me a thank-you note from him and his mother for stopping the government from burning the body. I hadn’t yet told them I’d stolen this thumb drive. It contained the key, and a . . . second file. A small text document, also encrypted. We’d stared at it for a time before realizing that the key had been printed on the outside of the thumb drive itself. Chapter nineteen

In Walked Jim September 2013: Entering his first morning staff meeting as FBI director, Jim Comey loped to the head of the table, put down his briefing books, and lowered his six-foot-eight-inch, shirtsleeved self into a huge leather chair. He leaned the chair so far back on its hind legs that he lay practically flat, testing gravity. Then he sat up, stretched like a big cat, pushed the briefing books to the side, and said, as if he were talking to a friend, I don’t want to talk about these today. I’d rather talk about some other things first. He talked about how effective leaders immediately make their expectations clear and proceeded to do just that for us. Said he would expect us to love our jobs, expect us to take care of ourselves … I remember less of what he said than the easygoing way he spoke and the absolute clarity of his day-one priority: building relationships with each member of his senior team. Comey continually reminded the FBI leadership that strong relationships with one another were critical to the institution’s functioning. One day, after we reviewed the briefing books, he said, Okay, now I want to go around the room, and I want you all to say one thing about yourselves that no one else here knows about you. One hard-ass from the criminal division stunned the room to silence when he said, My wife and I, we really love Disney characters, and all our vacation time we spend in the Magic Kingdom. Another guy, formerly a member of the hostage-rescue team, who carefully tended his persona as a dead-eyed meathead—I thought his aesthetic tastes ran the gamut from YouTube videos of snipers in Afghanistan to YouTube videos of Bigfoot sightings—turned out to be an art lover. I really like the old masters, he said, but my favorite is abstract expressionism. This hokey parlor game had the effect Comey intended. It gave people an opportunity to be interesting and funny with colleagues in a way that most had rarely been before. Years later, I remember it like yesterday. That was Jim’s effect on almost everyone he worked with. I observed how he treated people. Tell me your story, he would say, then listen as if there were only the two of you in the whole world. You were, of course, being carefully assessed at the same time that you were being appreciated and accepted. He once told me that people’s responses to that opening helped him gauge their ability to communicate. Over the next few years I would sit in on hundreds of meetings with him. All kinds of individuals and organizations would come to Comey with their issues. No matter how hostile they were when they walked in the door, they would always walk out on a cloud of Comey goodness. Sometimes, after the door had closed, he would look at me and say, That was a mess. Jim has the same judgmental impulse that everyone has. He is complicated, with many different sides, and he is so good at showing his best side—which is better than most people’s—that his bad side, which is not as bad as most people’s, can seem more shocking on the rare moments when it flashes to the surface.

Cortisol is involved in the fight-or-flight response to threat, helps control blood sugar levels, regulates metabolism, decreases inflammation, and helps us form new memories, especially about possible threats. It also helps balance blood pressure and salt and water ratios. Cortisol is a crucial hormone to protect overall health and well-being. It is generally higher in the morning and gradually decreases throughout the day.

Well, John’s IQ didn’t—and couldn’t—help him bounce back. For all his intelligence, he didn’t have a clue about how to cope with the threat of losing life’s meaning—his reason to get up every morning. And nothing I’d learned from my research on intelligence could actually help John—or my other clients or anyone else I knew—when he needed help the most. So I decided that intelligence is overrated. It is much discussed and celebrated, and it is somewhat important at school and in the workplace, but a high IQ is not essential to a good life. However, hope is like oxygen. As I saw then and continue to see every day, we can’t live without hope.

children are often hypervigilant, for they feel themselves to be ceaselessly in peril. And they’ve learned to sense threats; their life often depends on it.

Murnau now inserts scenes with little direct connection to the story, except symbolically. One involves a scientist who gives a lecture on the Venus flytrap, the “vampire of the vegetable kingdom.” Then Knock, in a jail cell, watches in close-up as a spider devours its prey. Why cannot man likewise be a vampire? Knock senses his Master has arrived, escapes, and scurries about the town with a coffin on his back. As fear of the plague spreads, “the town was looking for a scapegoat,” the titles say, and Knock creeps about on rooftops and is stoned, while the street is filled with dark processions of the coffins of the newly dead. Ellen Hutter learns that the only way to stop a vampire is for a good woman to distract him so that he stays out past the first cock’s crow. Her sacrifice not only saves the city but also reminds us of the buried sexuality in the Dracula story. Bram Stoker wrote with ironclad nineteenth-century Victorian values, inspiring no end of analysis from readers who wonder if the buried message of Dracula might be that unlicensed sex is dangerous to society. The Victorians feared venereal disease the way we fear AIDS, and vampirism may be a metaphor: The predator vampire lives without a mate, stalking his victims or seducing them with promises of bliss—like a rapist or a pickup artist. The cure for vampirism is obviously not a stake through the heart, but nuclear families and bourgeois values. Is Murnau’s Nosferatu scary in the modern sense? Not for me. I admire it more for its artistry and ideas, its atmosphere and images, than for its ability to manipulate my emotions like a skillful modern horror film. It knows none of the later tricks of the trade, like sudden threats that pop in from the side of the screen. But Nosferatu remains effective: It doesn’t scare us, but it haunts us. It shows not that vampires can jump out of shadows, but that evil can grow there, nourished on death. In a sense, Murnau’s film is about all of the things we worry about at three in the morning—cancer, war, disease, madness. It suggests these dark fears in the very style of its visuals. Much of the film is shot in shadow. The corners of the screen are used more than is ordinary; characters lurk or cower there, and it’s a rule of composition that tension is created when the subject of a shot is removed from the center of the frame. Murnau’s special effects add to the disquieting atmosphere: the fast motion of Orlok’s servant,

MONDAY On Monday morning I gathered my platoon together outside the barracks at the edge of town. “Right guys,” I said, “today we’re going to go hunting for skeletons. Apparently there’s a load of them in the forest, and if they pose a threat to the village we have to give them a whupping.” “Skeletons?” said Snipe, giving me a confused look. “Don’t them only come out at night?” “The forest to the south is pretty dark,” I said. “Plus, they might have an underground base there, to protect them from the sunlight. Either way, we need to investigate.” Ok, so I guess I should tell you a bit about my platoon? Mayor Birchwood set up a New Diamond City army, with volunteers who serve for a few days each month and then go back to their regular jobs for the rest of the month. I train those guys, but I also have my own team of soldiers who are the best of the best: The ones who can kick the most butt. There’s Captain Snipe, my second in command. He’s a bit moody, but he’s great with a crossbow. Then there’s Berian. He’s awesome with a sword, and a friendly guy. He has a beard, which is cool. Sometimes I wish that I could grow a beard. Shade is my stealth guy. He can sneak into anywhere. I always tell him he would have made a good ninja. Rainbow’s real name is Over the Rainbow (I’m not sure what his parents were thinking), but everyone just calls him Rainbow for short. He has a pet wolf named Malia, who does cool wolfy things for us, like sniffing out stuff and biting bad guys.

Freshen up your attitude A lot of people rely on yesterday’s attitude, or last week’s attitude, or last year’s attitude. That thing is old and stale. Start putting on a fresh new attitude, every morning. Get your mind going in the right direction. Develop the habit of living in a positive mind-set. This is what the Bible’s Daniel did. The scripture says he had an excellent spirit. He was a cut above. He stood out in the crowd. How did he do it? Every morning he got up early, opened his window, and thanked God for the day. He thanked God for His goodness, and thanked Him that he was well able. He was putting on that fresh new attitude, setting his mind for victory. Daniel was serving the king in a foreign land, when the king issued a decree that no one could pray to any God except the king’s God. If they did, they would be thrown into a lion’s den. That threat didn’t stop Daniel. He got up every morning and kept praying to Jehovah. Daniel’s enemies told the king, who had already issued the decree. He loved Daniel, but he couldn’t go back on his word. Daniel said, “Don’t worry, King, I’m going to be fine. The God I serve is well able to deliver me.” That’s what happens when you start the day off in faith, thinking positive thoughts on purpose. When you’re in a difficult situation, you don’t shrink back in fear with thoughts like: “Why is this happening to me?” Instead, you rise up in faith and say, “My God is well able. I’m armed with strength for this battle. I can do all things through Christ. If God be for me, who dare be against me?” The authorities threw Daniel into the lion’s den with more than one hundred hungry lions. Everyone expected Daniel to be eaten in a few minutes. But when you have this attitude of faith, God will fight your battles for you. God sent an angel to close the mouths of the lions. The king came by the next morning, and there was Daniel lying on the grass resting. The king got him out and said, “From now on we’re going to all worship the God of Daniel, the true and living God.” It’s interesting that the scripture says nothing negative about Joseph and Daniel. I’m sure they made mistakes, but you can’t find a record of anything they did wrong. There are stories of other great heroes of faith like Abraham, David, Moses, Paul, and Peter failing and making mistakes. Daniel and Joseph were good people, but they had bad circumstances. Unfair things happened to them. They were mistreated and faced huge obstacles. If you study their lives you’ll find one common denominator: They were always positive. They had this attitude of faith. They didn’t make excuses or say things like “God, why is this happening to me?” They started off each day with their minds going in the right direction, knowing that our God is well able. They both saw favor and blessings in amazing ways. In the same way, you can be a good person and have bad circumstances.

intricately patterned. There is nothing rustic here. Only when she looks at the paintings does Elizabeth remember the dark approach through the forest. These are outdoor paintings, trees and wild cliffs, huge sunsets. Elizabeth sits with Nina on a divan before a cluster of Bierstadts. Deep trees and cerebral winter skies. The museum is nearly empty this weekday morning. The elaborate gallery still. Elizabeth looks intently at the winter landscapes. And as she looks, she whispers to Nina, “It’s marvelous, just sitting here while the girls are at camp.” Nina looks at the floor. Renée is working as a junior counselor at the camp. It was Nina’s idea. She thought the job with the Lamkins would be good for her daughter, that it would teach her responsibility and how to care for children. But Renée made a fuss. Nina had to threaten and cajole and, in the end, force Renée to go. There were tears and threats up to the day she started. Even now, Renée is sulking about working there with the little children. “Renée doesn’t like the camp,” Nina says. “I think she’d rather waste her time wandering around, doing nothing, playing with that Arab girl. Andras doesn’t care. I hear the father owns a trucking business—he just drives trucks from New York to Montreal—” She breaks off, frustrated. “She’s a good child, really,” Elizabeth says. “But Andras spoils her,” says Nina. Then Elizabeth sees that Nina is really upset. There are tears in Nina’s eyes. It’s hard for her to speak. Elizabeth sees it, and doesn’t know what to do. They are close neighbors, but they are not intimate friends. Beautiful Nina in her crisp dress, downcast among all these paintings. “He’s very … indulgent of the children, both of them,” Nina says. “He used to take them to the warehouse and let them pick out any toys they liked.” “At least he’s not in the candy business,” Elizabeth says. “Toys won’t rot their teeth.” “He’s going to let Renée quit piano,” Nina says bitterly, utterly serious, “and she’ll regret it all her life.” Elizabeth tries to look sympathetic. She’s heard Renée play. “And now that Renée is working at the Lamkins’ camp, she wants to quit that too.” “He wouldn’t let her do that,” Elizabeth ventures. “I