Todd White Quotes

Girlie, you f*ck this up and I'm calling the boys in the white jackets. You let something that fine slip through your fingers, you deserve a padded room. Especially if he's good at relationship stuff. Most especially if he's serious about you. No one who looks like that and fills out a pair of jeans like that is good at relationship stuff. I don't care if he runs through seven circles of hell.

Stories give color to black and white information.

Television isn't black and white anymore, and neither are people

Todd paused and stared into Terrence's eyes. there was no understanding there, just a white-hot rage and fear. he was looking at Todd the way you would look at a kid on ritalin who'd just taken a loaded shotgun down from the mantel.

There were days so clear and skies so brilliant blue, with white clouds scudding across them like ships under full sail, and she felt she could lift right off the ground. One moment she was ambling down a path, and the next thing she knew, the wind would take hold of her, like a hand pushing against her back. Her feet would start running without her even willing it, even knowing it. And she would run faster and faster across the prairie, until her heart jumped like a rabbit and her breath came in deep gasps and her feet barely skimmed the ground. It felt good to spend herself this way. The air tasted fresh and delicious; it smelled like damp earth, grass, and flowers. And her body felt strong, supple, and hungry for more of everything life could serve up. She ran and felt like one of the animals, as though her feet were growing up out of the earth. And she knew what they knew, that sometimes you ran just because you could, because of the way the rush of air felt on your face and how your legs reached out, eating up longer and longer patches of ground. She ran until the blood pounded in her ears, so loud that she couldn't hear the voices that said, You're not good enough, You're not old enough, You're not beautiful or smart or loveable, and you will always be alone. She ran because there were ghosts chasing her, shadows that pursued her, heartaches she was leaving behind. She was running for her life, and those phantoms couldn't catch her, not here, not anywhere. She would outrun fear and sadness and worry and shame and all those losses that had lined up against her like a column of soldiers with their guns shouldered and ready to fire. If she had to, she would outrun death itself. She would keep on running until she dropped, exhausted. Then she would roll over onto her back and breathe in the endless sky above her, sun glinting off her face. To be an animal, to have a body like this that could taste, see hear, and fly through space, to lie down and smell the earth and feel the heat of the sun on your face was enough for her. She did not need anything else but this: just to be alive, cool air caressing her skin, dreaming of Ivy and what might be ahead.

It was an ugly flower, pink with yellow-tipped stamens sticking out of the center. It deserved to die. Zoe pulled the hammer back in a slow motion and snapped it forward. There was a delicious sound of cracking plaster as the flower dissolved into rubble. White dust rose all around here. "I hate that wallpaper," she said

God spared my life not so that I could live for me but so that I could just give everything to Him. You know, God's not asking for much. he's asking you to give up something you were never created to be so that you can become who he says you are. It's really not that much. I mean, Mercy woke us up today so that Love gave us one more day to manifest Him and not us.

There was some hope that Pastor Saeed would be released when the Obama administration opened talks with the Iranians in the latter months of 2013. Instead, the White House made a deal with his captors: they got to keep enriching uranium, and Pastor Saeed was beaten. They received billions of dollars in sanctions relief, and Pastor Saeed was abused. They received “humanitarian transactions” from the United States, and Pastor Saeed was tortured.

Joel arrived at Hemmant beach in a pair of white nylon shorts. He knew they'd be see-through once they were wet, and he deliberately didn't wear any underwear, because he wanted to be in the surf, practically naked, and have people looking at him.

When Lauren hired a woman to come to the party and sell sex toys, Kristi turned to her and said, 'This seems like something you would want more than I would. I mean, I have Todd now and we're getting married, so I don't really need a vibrator. But it's fun for the single girls, I guess.

The urban strategist Todd Litman summed up zoning’s effect thus: “It seemed that segregation was just the natural working of the free market, the result of the sum of countless individual choices about where to live. But the houses were single—and their residents white—because of the invisible hand of government.

But like the formation of the American Medical Association with its explicit goal of discrediting midwives; and the institutionalization of the natural sciences, which labeled many women 'amateur naturalists,' while men grabbed government and university jobs as botanists, entomologists, and astronomers; the change erected financial and cultural barriers for all women and racial barriers for those who weren't white.

One afternoon while crossing the street I noticed I was crying. But I could not identify the source of my tears. I felt a heat containing the colors of autumn. The dark stone in my heart pulsed quietly, igniting like a coal in a hearth. Who is in my heart? I wondered. I soon recognized Todd’s humorous spirit, and as I continued my walk I slowly reclaimed an aspect of him that was also myself—a natural optimism. And slowly the leaves of my life turned, and I saw myself pointing out simple things to Fred, skies of blue, clouds of white, hoping to penetrate the veil of a congenital sorrow. I saw his pale eyes looking intently into mine, trying to trap my walleye in his unfaltering gaze. That alone took up several pages that filled me with such painful longing that I fed them into the fire in my heart, like Gogol burning page by page the manuscript of Dead Souls Two. I burned them all, one by one; they did not form ash, did not go cold, but radiated the warmth of human compassion.

Todd wrapped his arm around her. They stood together in silent awe, watching the sunset. All Christy could think of was how this was what she had always wanted, to be held in Todd's arms as well as in his heart. Just as the last golden drop of sun melted into the ocean, Christy closed her eyes and drew in a deep draught of the sea air. "Did you know," Todd said softly, "that the setting sun looks so huge from the island of Papua New Guinea that it almost looks like you're on another planet? I've seen pictures." Then, as had happened with her reflection in her cup of tea and in her disturbing dream, Christy heard those two piercing words, "Let go." She knew what she had to do. Turning to face Todd, she said, "Pictures aren't enough for you, Todd. You have to go." "I will. Someday. Lord willing," he said casually. "Don't you see, Todd? The Lord is willing. This is your 'someday.' Your opportunity to go on the mission field is now. You have to go." Their eyes locked in silent communion. "God has been telling me something, Todd. He's been telling me to let you go. I don't want to, but I need to obey Him." Todd paused. "Maybe I should tell them I can only go for the summer. That way I'll only be gone a few months. A few weeks, really. We'll be back together in the fall." Christy shook her head. "It can't be like that, Todd. You have to go for as long as God tells you to go. And as long as I've known you, God has been telling you to go. His mark is on your life, Todd. It's obvious. You need to obey Him." "Kilikina," Todd said, grasping Christy by the shoulders, "do you realize what you're saying? If I go, I may never come back." "I know." Christy's reply was barely a whisper. She reached for the bracelet on her right wrist and released the lock. Then taking Todd's hand, she placed the "Forever" bracelet in his palm and closed his fingers around it. "Todd," she whispered, forcing the words out, "the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you His peace. And may you always love Jesus more than anything else. Even more than me." Todd crumbled to the sand like a man who had been run through with a sword. Burying his face in his hands, he wept. Christy stood on wobbly legs. What have I done? Oh, Father God, why do I have to let him go? Slowly lowering her quivering body to the sand beside Todd, Christy cried until all she could taste was the salty tears on her lips. They drove the rest of the way home in silence. A thick mantle hung over them, entwining them even in their separation. To Christy it seemed like a bad dream. Someone else had let go of Todd. Not her! He wasn't really going to go. They pulled into Christy's driveway, and Todd turned off the motor. Without saying anything, he got out of Gus and came around to Christy's side to open the door for her. She stepped down and waited while he grabbed her luggage from the backseat. They walked to the front door. Todd stopped her under the trellis of wildly fragrant white jasmine. With tears in his eyes, he said in a hoarse voice, "I'm keeping this." He lifted his hand to reveal the "Forever" bracelet looped between his fingers. "If God ever brings us together again in this world, I'm putting this back on your wrist, and that time, my Kilikina, it will stay on forever." He stared at her through blurry eyes for a long minute, and then without a hug, a kiss, or even a good-bye, Todd turned to go. He walked away and never looked back.

Christy dug her hand deeper into her shoulder bag. Scanning the papers she finally located there, she found no phone numbers or addresses listed. All the plans had been made in such haste. All she knew was that someone was supposed to meet her here. She was here, and he or she wasn't. Never in her life had she felt so completely alone. Stranded with nowhere to turn. A prayer came quickly to her lips. "Father God, I'm at Your mercy here. I know You're in control. Please show me what to do." Suddenly she heard a voice calling to her. "Kilikina!" Christy's heart stopped. Only one person in the entire world had ever called her by her Hawaiian name. She spun around. "Kilikina," called out the tall, blond surfer who was running toward her. Christy looked up into the screaming silver-blue eyes that could only belong to one person. "Todd?" she whispered, convinced she was hallucinating. "Kilikina," Todd wrapped his arms around her so tightly that for an instant she couldn't breathe. He held her a long time. Crying. She could feel his warm tears on her neck. She knew this had to be real. But how could it be? "Todd?" she whispered again. "How? I mean, what...? I don't..." Todd pulled away, and for the first time she noticed the big gouquet of white carnations in his hand. They were now a bit squashed. "For you," he said, his eyes clearing and his rich voice sounding calm and steady. Then, seeing her shocked expression, he asked, "You really didn't know I was here, did you?" Christy shook her head, unable to find any words. "Didn't Dr. Benson tell you?" She shook her head again. "You mean you came all this way by yourself, and you didn't even know I was here?" Now it was Todd's turn to look surprised. "No, I thought you were in Papua New Guinea or something. I had no idea you were here!" "They needed me here more," Todd said with a chin-up gesture toward the beach. "It's the perfect place for me." With a wide smile spreading above his square jaw, he said, "Ever since I received the fax yesterday saying they were sending you, I've been out of my mind with joy! Kilikina, you can't imagine how I've been feeling." Christy had never heard him talk like this before. Todd took the bouquet from her and placed it on top of her luggage. Then, grasping both her quivering hands in his and looking into her eyes, he said, "Don't you see? There is no way you or I could ever have planned this. It's from God." The shocked tears finally caught up to Christy's eyes, and she blinked to keep Todd in focus. "It is," she agreed. "God brought us back together, didn't He?" A giggle of joy and delight danced from her lips. "Do you remember what I said when you gave me back your bracelet?" Todd asked. "I said that if God ever brought us back together, I would put that bracelet back on your wrist, and that time, it would stay on forever." Christy nodded. She had replayed the memory of that day a thousand times in her mind. It had seemed impossible that God would bring them back together. Christy's heart pounded as she realized that God, in His weird way, had done the impossible. Todd reached into his pocket and pulled out the "Forever" ID bracelet. He tenderly held Christy's wrist, and circling it with the gold chain, he secured the clasp. Above their heads a fresh ocean wind blew through the palm trees. It almost sounded as if the trees were applauding. Christy looked up from her wrist and met Todd's expectant gaze. Deep inside, Christy knew that with the blessing of the Lord, Todd had just stepped into the garden of her heart. In the holiness of that moment, his silver-blue eyes embraced hers and he whispered, "I promise, Kilikina. Forever." "Forever," Christy whispered back. Then gently, reverently, Todd and Christy sealed their forever promise with a kiss.

May I cut in?” Ken asks as the next song begins. Hardin frowns and looks at me, then back to his father. “Yeah, but only one song,” he grumbles. Ken laughs and repeats his son’s words: “One song.” Hardin lets go of me, and Ken’s hand goes around my back. I swallow down the uneasy feelings I hold for him. He keeps the conversation light as we dance and my ill feelings are further muted as we laugh at an obviously drunk couple swaying back and forth next to us. “Would you look at that?” Ken then says, his voice full of wonder. I turn to see what he’s referring to and hear my own small gasp as I spot Hardin awkwardly swaying back and forth with Karen. She laughs as he steps on her white shoes, and he smiles an embarrassed smile. Tonight has been better than I could have dreamed.

Vargus: Be me. Eat a bag of dicks for breakfast. Go home for lunch and eat another bag of dicks. Finish work and start preparing my bag of dicks for dinner while I warm up ‘The Saga Continues’. No Aetherius. Me sad. Chew dicks pensively. Some guy called Scorpius fighting instead. Level 28. Total noobcake. ROFL, wut a tryhard. Noobcake kicks demi-god in my three meals a day and cusses him out in livestream, with broken arms and legs. Dicks spilling from my gobsmacked open mouth (soooooo many dicks). I inhale too hard and my dinner gets lodged in my throat. Stars in my vision, blacking out. Try to call my mom for help, but multiple phalli are blocking my respiratory organs. Tumble out of my chair sideways and hit the ground, hands around my throat to dislodge all the penises I’ve been chowing down on. There’s no hope, there are too many. Everything goes dark. Wake up, my vision is blurry and my throat is blissfully unburdened by inadvertent deep throating. I’m being transported somewhere. Am I on my way to heaven? How will I explain my eating habits to Saint Peter? Big blurry white words are floating into perspective in the center of my vision. I try to focus on them, my brain still struggling to replenish oxygen. The words clear, and it is obvious that my diet has not gone unnoticed. I am in hell. ‘The Elder Scrolls V’. Oh no, oh god no, anything but that! ‘SKYRIM’. Please, St. Peter, I can change, please don’t forsake me, PLEA- “Hey you, you’re finally awake”. Thanks Todd. 10/10, would eat dicks and watch Daemien kick a demi-god in the schlong again.

The firm’s fourth partner, Jeff Nussbaum, had carved out a niche writing jokes for public figures. It was he who taught me about the delicate balance all public-sector humorists hope to strike. Writing something funny for a politician, I learned, is like designing something stunning for Marlon Brando past his prime. The qualifier is everything. At first I didn’t understand this. In June, President Obama’s speechwriters asked Jeff to pitch jokes for an upcoming appearance at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner. I sent him a few ideas, including one about the president and First Lady’s recent trip to see a Broadway show: “My critics are upset it cost taxpayer dollars to fly me and Michelle to New York for date night. But let me be clear. That wasn’t spending. It was stimulus.” Unsurprisingly, my line about stimulating America’s first couple didn’t make it into the script. But others did. The morning after the speech, I watched on YouTube as President Obama turned to NBC reporter Chuck Todd. “Chuck embodies the best of both worlds: he has the rapid-fire style of a television correspondent, and the facial hair of a radio correspondent.” That was my joke! I grabbed the scroll bar and watched again. The line wasn’t genius. The applause was largely polite. Still, I was dumbfounded. A thought entered my brain, and then, just a few days later, exited the mouth of the president of the United States. This was magic. Still, even then, I had no illusions of becoming a presidential speechwriter. When friends asked if I hoped to work in the White House, I told them Obama had more than enough writers already. I meant it.

A while back a young woman from another state came to live with some of her relatives in the Salt Lake City area for a few weeks. On her first Sunday she came to church dressed in a simple, nice blouse and knee-length skirt set off with a light, button-up sweater. She wore hose and dress shoes, and her hair was combed simply but with care. Her overall appearance created an impression of youthful grace. Unfortunately, she immediately felt out of place. It seemed like all the other young women her age or near her age were dressed in casual skirts, some rather distant from the knee; tight T-shirt-like tops that barely met the top of their skirts at the waist (some bare instead of barely); no socks or stockings; and clunky sneakers or flip-flops. One would have hoped that seeing the new girl, the other girls would have realized how inappropriate their manner of dress was for a chapel and for the Sabbath day and immediately changed for the better. Sad to say, however, they did not, and it was the visitor who, in order to fit in, adopted the fashion (if you can call it that) of her host ward. It is troubling to see this growing trend that is not limited to young women but extends to older women, to men, and to young men as well. . . . I was shocked to see what the people of this other congregation wore to church. There was not a suit or tie among the men. They appeared to have come from or to be on their way to the golf course. It was hard to spot a woman wearing a dress or anything other than very casual pants or even shorts. Had I not known that they were coming to the school for church meetings, I would have assumed that there was some kind of sporting event taking place. The dress of our ward members compared very favorably to this bad example, but I am beginning to think that we are no longer quite so different as more and more we seem to slide toward that lower standard. We used to use the phrase “Sunday best.” People understood that to mean the nicest clothes they had. The specific clothing would vary according to different cultures and economic circumstances, but it would be their best. It is an affront to God to come into His house, especially on His holy day, not groomed and dressed in the most careful and modest manner that our circumstances permit. Where a poor member from the hills of Peru must ford a river to get to church, the Lord surely will not be offended by the stain of muddy water on his white shirt. But how can God not be pained at the sight of one who, with all the clothes he needs and more and with easy access to the chapel, nevertheless appears in church in rumpled cargo pants and a T-shirt? Ironically, it has been my experience as I travel around the world that members of the Church with the least means somehow find a way to arrive at Sabbath meetings neatly dressed in clean, nice clothes, the best they have, while those who have more than enough are the ones who may appear in casual, even slovenly clothing. Some say dress and hair don’t matter—it’s what’s inside that counts. I believe that truly it is what’s inside a person that counts, but that’s what worries me. Casual dress at holy places and events is a message about what is inside a person. It may be pride or rebellion or something else, but at a minimum it says, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand the difference between the sacred and the profane.” In that condition they are easily drawn away from the Lord. They do not appreciate the value of what they have. I worry about them. Unless they can gain some understanding and capture some feeling for sacred things, they are at risk of eventually losing all that matters most. You are Saints of the great latter-day dispensation—look the part.

Apt Pupil 1 He looked like the total all-American kid as he pedaled his twenty-six-inch Schwinn with the apehanger handlebars up the residential suburban street, and that’s just what he was: Todd Bowden, thirteen years old, five-feet-eight and a healthy one hundred and forty pounds, hair the color of ripe corn, blue eyes, white even teeth, lightly tanned skin marred by not even the first shadow of adolescent acne. He was smiling a summer vacation smile as he pedaled through the sun and shade not too far from his own house. He looked like the kind of kid who might have a paper route, and as a matter of fact, he did—he delivered the Santo Donato Clarion. He also looked like the kind of kid who might sell greeting cards for premiums, and he had done that, too. They were the kind that come with your name printed inside—JACK AND MARY BURKE, OR DON AND SALLY, OR THE MURCHISONS. He looked like the sort of boy who might whistle while he worked, and he often did so.

Dr. Knox Todd began documenting how patients’ race affects the treatment of pain when he was a doctor in the UCLA Emergency Center in the 1990s.46 He and colleagues examined the way doctors treated 139 white and Latino patients coming to the emergency room over a two-year period with a single injury—fractures of a long bone in either the arm or leg. Because this type of fracture is extremely painful, there is no medical reason to distinguish between the two groups of patients. Yet the researchers discovered that Latinos were twice as likely as whites to receive no pain medication while in the emergency room.47 Although it’s possible that the Latino patients complained less of pain, the doctors should have been aware of the high degree of pain they suffered, given the nature of their injuries. When Todd moved to Emory University School of Medicine, he led an Atlanta-based study that confirmed his finding in Los Angeles. This time his research team analyzed medical charts of 217 patients who were treated for long-bone fractures at an inner-city emergency room that served both black and white patients. In a 2000 article in Annals of Emergency Medicine, Todd reported that 43 percent of blacks, but only 26 percent of whites, received no pain medication. In this study, Todd took the additional step of documenting whether or not the patients expressed pain to their doctors. By carefully looking at notations in the medical files, he found that black patients were about as likely as whites to complain of pain. Black patients thus received pain medication half as often as whites because doctors did not order it for them, not because blacks do not feel pain or do not want pain relief.

I was in a copse of pine trees, and the pine was overpowering my scent. The pheromones of the big cat mingled with the pine and I spun around. I was smelling and looking for the flash of white, but I couldn’t see it. I grew angry and I pawed at the earth. The aroma of the soil cleansed my nose as I leaned down and sniffed deeply. I slowly closed and opened my eyes. As I looked ahead I saw something. There, further on, I had another glimpse of the large white cat. She was stopped and her hindquarters were in the air. I stared, trying to figure out what she was doing. Her forepaws and head were on the ground, but her hind was wiggling. She was next to a tree, marking it, so I slowly paced in a zigzag pattern as I walked close to her. I was being cautious because poachers had been known to employ shifters to entice real animals in the wild. She turned her head and growled at me. I took it as an invite to come closer. I ran up to her and started circling. She was an albino panther as I thought. I paced closer, breathing deep. I was in the middle of Ohio, outside of a lost cougar and a few bobcats there were no big cats here, at least not counting lycanthropes, and this creature didn’t smell like one of those. Her rump almost wagged in anticipation, and I felt my tiger body respond. I circled her, taking a swipe in her direction to see if she was going to respond negatively to me. The pink eyes followed me and she growled. I walked up to her, sniffed her face and neckline. I didn’t smell any other male on her, and I walked to her raised rump. Burying my nose in her groin I smelled deeper, and she shifted her body. I felt it before I could see it. She was shifting, changing from albino panther to human. I sat on my hindquarters as I watched. Her white fur seemed to melt from her, sliding upwards, starting with her back legs. The flesh and fur on her feet slid forward, leaving human feet and calves. It was fully fleshed, unlike some lycanthrope changes when they’re younger. The calves of her legs appeared, and slowly slid up. The panther flesh was sliding forward, slowly and methodically. Across her ass and groin, now lower back and stomach. The pheromones I smelled earlier were coming from her, the human form. I stood and started pacing behind her, and her panther head shook in a very human gesture. I stopped, fighting the desire to lean forward and lick her wetness with my large tongue. The flesh was sliding forward and as her teats turned into breasts, I growled in need. Next were her shoulders and arms, then her head and hands. As the transformation ended, there was a pile of fur and flesh lying in front of her. Her human form was beautiful; a full figured woman with long white hair, that was perfectly natural. She looked to be in her early forties, but didn’t have a line on her face that she didn’t want. In the corners of her eyes were small, but beautiful, crow’s feet, laugh lines surrounded her mouth. She laid out with her former form under her, laying on it, propped up by her elbows. She smiled with the confidence of someone who was used to being in charge. Her long hair flowed around her shoulders, framing her body. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who.

Advance Praise for THE GREAT NEW ORLEANS KIDNAPPING CASE: RACE, LAW, AND JUSTICE IN THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA "Michael Ross' The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case has all the elements one might expect from a legal thriller set in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Child abduction and voodoo. 'Quadroons.' A national headline-grabbing trial. Plus an intrepid creole detective.... A terrific job of sleuthing and storytelling, right through to the stunning epilogue." --Lawrence N. Powell, author of The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans "When little Mollie Digby went missing from her New Orleans home in the summer of 1870, her disappearance became a national sensation. In his compelling new book Michael Ross brings Mollie back. Read The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case for the extraordinary story it tells--and the complex world it reveals." --Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age "Michael Ross's account of the 1870 New Orleans kidnapping of a white baby by two African-American women is a gripping narrative of one of the most sensational trials of the post-Civil War South. Even as he draws his readers into an engrossing mystery and detective story, Ross skillfully illuminates some of the most fundamental conflicts of race and class in New Orleans and the region." --Dan T. Carter, University of South Carolina "The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case is a masterwork of narration, with twists, turns, cliff-hangers, and an impeccable level of telling detail about a fascinating cast of characters. The reader comes away from this immersive experience with a deeper and sadder understanding of the possibilities and limits of Reconstruction." --Stephen Berry, author of House of Abraham: Lincoln and The Todds, a Family Divided by War "The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case is such a great read that it is easy to forget that the book is a work of history, not fiction. Who kidnapped Mollie Digby? The book, however, is compelling because it is great history. As Ross explores the mystery of Digby's disappearance, he reconstructs the lives not just of the Irish immigrant parents of Mollie Digby and the women of color accused of her kidnapping, but also the broad range of New Orleanians who became involved in the case. The kidnapping thus serves as a lens on the possibilities and uncertainties of Reconstruction, which take on new meanings because of Ross's skillful research and masterful storytelling." --Laura F. Edwards, Duke University

The buzzards over Pondy Woods Achieve the blue tense altitudes Black figments that the woods release, Obscenity in form and grace, Drifting high through the pure sunshine Till the sun in gold decline. (...) By the buzzard roost Big Jim Todd Listened for hoofs on the corduroy road Or for the foul and sucking sound A man's foot makes on the marshy ground. Past midnight, when the moccasin Slipped from the log and, trailing in Its obscured waters, broke The dark algae, one lean bird spoke, (...) "[Big Jim] your breed ain't metaphysical." The buzzard coughed, His words fell In the darkness, mystic and ambrosial. "But we maintain our ancient rite, Eat the gods by day and prophesy by night. We swing against the sky and wait; You seize the hour, more passionate Than strong, and strive with time to die -- With time, the beaked tribe's astute ally. "The Jew-boy died. The Syrian vulture swung Remotely above the cross whereon he hung From dinner-time to supper-time, and all The people gathered there watched him until The lean brown chest no longer stirred, Then idly watched the slow majestic bird That in the last sun above the twilit hill Gleamed for a moment at the height and slid Down the hot wind and in the darkness hid. [Big Jim], regard the circumstance of breath: Non omnis moriar, the poet sayeth." Pedantic, the bird clacked its gray beak, With a Tennessee accent to the classic phrase; Jim understood, and was about to speak, But the buzzard drooped one wing and filmed the eyes. At dawn unto the Sabbath wheat he came, That gave to the dew its faithless yellow flame From kindly loam in recollection of The fires that in the brutal rock one strove. To the ripe wheat he came at dawn. Northward the printed smoke stood quiet above The distant cabins of Squiggtown. A train's far whistle blew and drifted away Coldly; lucid and thin the morning lay Along the farms, and here no sound Touched the sweet earth miraculously stilled. Then down the damp and sudden wood there belled The musical white-throated hound. In pondy Woods in the summer's drouth Lurk fever and the cottonmouth. And buzzards over Pondy Woods Achieve the blue tense altitudes, Drifting high in the pure sunshine Till the sun in gold decline; Then golden and hieratic through The night their eyes burn two by two.

Todd the manager was at her cubicle the moment her chair squeaked. “How you doin’, Jane?” he asked in his oft-affected pseudo-Sopranos accent. “Fine.” She stared. He had a new haircut. His white blond hair was now spiked with an incredible amount of pomade that smelled of raspberries, a do that could only be carried off with true success by a fifteen-year-old boy wielding an impressive and permanent glare. Todd was grinning. And forty-three. Jane wondered if politeness required her to offer a compliment on something glaringly obvious. “Uh…you, your hair is different.” “Hey, girls always notice the hair. Right? Isn’t that basically right?” “I guess I just proved it,” she said sadly. “Super. Hey, listen,” he sat on the edge of her desk, “we’ve got a last-minute addition that needs special attention. It may seem like your basic stock photo array, but don’t be fooled! This is for the all-important page sixteen layout. I’d give this one to your basic interns, but I’m choosing you because I think you’d do a super job. What d’you say?” “Sure thing, Todd.” “Su-per.” He gave her two thumbs-up and held them there, smiling, his eyes unblinking. After a few moments, Jane cringed. What did he want her to do? Was she supposed to high-five his thumbs? Touch thumb-pad to thumb-pad? Or did he just leave them there so long for emphasis? The silence quivered. At last Jane opted for raising her own thumbs in a mirror of the Todd salute. “All right, my lady Jane.” He nodded, still with the thumbs up, and kept them up as he walked away. At least he hadn’t asked her out again. Why was it that when she was aching for a man, everyone was married, but when she was giving them up, so many men were so awkwardly single?

When Camus’s mother asked him what he wanted as a wedding gift, he replied, “A dozen pairs of white socks.

I walked inside and spotted her at the register. “Hey.” “Hey.” She gave me a beautiful smile. Her white teeth were perfectly straight, and her lustrous

LifeWay Christian Stores, once the nation’s largest Christian retail chain and an affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention, has wielded that power overtly. When Rachel Held Evans and Jen Hatmaker ran afoul of conservative orthodoxies related to sexuality and gender, LifeWay stopped carrying their books. It did, however, stock Todd Starnes’s The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again (“ Winning was just the beginning . . . change may start at the White House, but it finishes at your house”) and R. C. Sproul and Abdul Saleeb’s The Dark Side of Islam. The products Christians consume shape the faith they inhabit. Today, what it means to be a “conservative evangelical” is as much about culture as it is about theology.

Legend of the Universe The Cherokee have many different legends. One of them is the story of the universe. This legend has been handed down from generation to generation. Today’s elders continue to pass this story down to the children. The Cherokee used to believe that the world was made up of three separate worlds. There was the Upper World, the Lower World, and This World. This World was a round island resting on the surface of the water. Four cords from each of the directions of the compass attached it to the sky. Each direction had its own color that represented something from the Lower World or the Upper World. The Upper World had perfect order and stability. The Lower World was full of disorder. East was the color red, because it was the color of the sun. Red was also the color of fire and represented life. North was the direction of cold, so its color was blue. It represented trouble and defeat. South was the direction of warmth, and its color was white. It was associated with peace and happiness. The moon was in the west. It gave no warmth and unlike the Sun, it was not a giver of life. Black was the color that represented the west. The west stood for death and the souls of the dead. The Cherokee believed that it was their role to find a halfway spot between the Upper World and the Lower World. This spot should be found while living in This World.

Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1987); Joan E. Cashin, First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006); Catherine Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2009); Daniel Mark Epstein, The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage (New York: Ballantine Books, 2008); Jennifer Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave (New York: Broadway Books, 2003); Ernest B. Furgurson, Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2004); Becky Rutberg, Mary Lincoln’s Dressmaker: Elizabeth Keckley’s Remarkable Rise from Slave to White House Confidante (New York: Walker and Company, 1995); Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Knopf, 1972); and John E.

The first volume of Dickinson poems, bound in white leather and published on 12 November 1890, was handled in just the way that had put the poet off publication during her lifetime: the editors had tampered with the inventive punctuation and off-rhymes of the volcano speaking through ‘buckled lips’. Words were changed ‘to make them smoother’ (as Mabel Todd put it) and dashes eliminated. There were trivialising titles like ‘With a Flower’, ‘Playmates’ and ‘Troubled about many things’.

Someone once asked Todd White why God doesn’t heal amputees. Todd’s reply was, “How many amputees have you laid hands on?

In the 1960s and 1970s, a professor of sociology at Wesleyan named Hubert O’Gorman found that those who advocated for segregation were the most likely to believe that those around them also supported segregation. On the other hand, those advocating change from the status quo were much more likely to think that they were alone, even though they were not. “The closer whites came to endorsing the value of strict racial segregation,” O’Gorman observed, “the more apt they were to assume that the majority of whites in their areas agreed with them.”53 By misreading others and keeping quiet about their true views, people thus damaged their own integrity and the greater cause they privately hoped would advance.54

Alternative facts” was not a phrase concocted to justify or whitewash a lie—it was a declaration that the new administration reserved the right to lie. Conway spoke to Todd from the position of power, threatening him from the first with the prospect of losing access. The two of them were having two different conversations: Todd was trying to cover a major news story, which was that the new White House press secretary had lied to the public; Conway was setting the new terms of the conversation between the administration and the media.

The Robeson and Morgan plans—the Show Boat that could have been, the Show Boat that came to be—were built on new song-centered, thoroughly gendered performance personas: the spiritual-singing black man and the torch song-singing white woman, both of which marked out new areas of racially defined performance. These were innovative voices and figures, expressions of the changing popular culture landscape of Jazz Age Manhattan.

Both Ferber and Curtis argued that authentic musical expression was untrained, spontaneous, and (often) black, while music that was learned formally was destined to be refined, soulless, and (absent genius) likely to be white.

In those venues, where her characters were made to sing and dance by creative figures such as Oscar Hammerstein, the implications of Ferber’s story of a white girl with a black voice would take Show Boat in unexpected directions.

Let us look at the example of racism to make this clear. The contemporary white cynic will readily admit that the American public ideology of a colorblind society serves to mask the continuing presence of racism. Despite claims that the society has become colorblind, the cynic recognizes that some whites still harbor prejudice toward African Americans and that this prejudice has an adverse effect on the life chances of African Americans (as evinced by the number of African American men in jail, the disparity in income between white and African American, etc.). This recognition, however, coexists in the thinking of the cynic with a seemingly contradictory idea—that African Americans have it easier than whites today, that society has entered an era of reverse discrimination. This is why so many whites feel a visceral objection to affirmative action: it provides even more privilege to a group that already has a privileged status, a privileged relationship to enjoyment. In the racist’s view, the African American enjoys more because she/he gets more for less, has to work less for more benefits (as the policy of affirmative action seems to attest to). How can we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory attitudes? The cynic’s ability to sustain both attitudes stems from the split between her/his relationship to public ideology and to the fantasmatic underside of power. She/he doubts the official proclamations of authority, which claim to have eradicated racism, but invests her/himself in the underside of that authority, which relies on a racist fear of the Other’s enjoyment in order to function. In sustaining the investment in the underlying racist fantasy, the cynic finds support for her/his being in the big Other. But the cynic’s suspicion of public ideology allows her/him to feel as if she/he is transgressing the norms of the big Other. Thus, the cynic is able to have it both ways, attaining the security that stems from obedience and the enjoyment that transgression produces, without having to risk actually losing the support of her/his identity within the big Other. The white cynic can both feel her/himself to be righteously antiracist in her/his ability to analyze the hidden racism in American society while at the same time feeling her/himself to be a victim of reverse discrimination. Suspicion of the public law and investment in its obscene underside offers such a subject the best of both worlds.

the original Show Boat forged in the crucible of the Jazz Age, when black music and musicians arrived in the white mainstream in powerful new ways.

Todd Gitlin, a key figure in the Berkeley New Left movement, emerged as an internal critic of the left over that round of campus wars, arguing that the left ‘marched on the English department while the right took the White House.

So I stole like a mother. I wrote in the bathroom, I printed using the company printer, I turned away from my Kodak report to jot things down, I edited while waiting for an offsite groundwater remediation system to purge, I sometimes blew off a full afternoon when I was feeling ripe, although usually, when that happened, I’d take work home, just to be fair. 9. In grad school I had grown suspicious of conventional literary beauty, wary of what I thought of as, for example, the literary triple descriptor: “Todd sat at the black table, the ebony plane, the dark-hued bearer of various glasses and plates, whose white, disk-shaped, saucer-like presences mocking his futility, his impotence, his inability to act.” Christ, I had come to feel, just say it: “Todd sat at the table.” Or better yet, cut that, too. Why do we need to know that Todd is sitting at a table? Let me know when Todd actually does something. And it better not be “raising a cup to his lips” or “pausing thoughtfully to let Randy’s insight fully inform him.” I was feeling a little cranky back then, re prose.

Although fear and anxiety are the major emotional reactions by Whites as they enter a discourse on race, many other nested or embedded feelings make their presence felt as well (Sue et al., 2010; Sue, Torino, et al., 2009; Tatum, 1992; Todd & Abrams, 2011). Unless these are acknowledged and deconstructed, they will continue to hold an invisible power over Whites, making it difficult to gain insight into their psychological conflicts and preventing them from freely discussing issues of race, racism, and Whiteness (Tatum, 1992, 2002).

one of the greatest barriers to race talk for many White Americans: the invisibility of their Whiteness (Bell, 2003; Helms, 1992; Spanierman, Poteat, Beer, & Armstrong, 2006; Tatum, 1992; Todd & Abrams, 2011).

About Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States. Born in a log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky, in 1809, he grew up smart, even though he rarely attended school. While working as a postmaster and surveyor, he began to study law. He married Mary Todd in 1842. Abe eventually entered politics. Shortly after he was elected president in 1861, the Civil War began. Firm in his belief that a divided nation could not survive, Lincoln mobilized the North into action, freed the slaves, and reunified the country. One week after the war ended in April 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot and killed the president at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Of the Lincolns’ four children, only the oldest, Robert, lived to be an adult. Their next two children, Edward and William, died in childhood. Tad, the youngest, was eighteen when he caught a “severe cold,” possibly pneumonia, and passed away in 1871.

past is the future present. Our life springs from the pure joy of being among Those Who Know More, of being one of the believers who follow The One Who Knows Most of All. We are lovers and also warriors. Long ago, when the whites came, we repelled their cruelties and resettled in remote Tayrona. When they followed us, we killed so many, they left us alone for the next half millennium. Forty years ago, the whites returned to the Sierra. They enslaved the other four families. Then they moved against us. So many of them. First the drug traffickers. Then the guerrillas, who spoke of good but did evil. Then the paramilitaries, who wanted the guerrillas’ treasures for themselves. Then the government soldiers, who were the worst of all. We fought them all. One day,

instead of focusing on a collective response to the impacts of this shocking political disaster for liberals or ministering to those still experiencing degrees of anxiety and grief just a few months past the election, the assemblage dwelt almost exclusively on internal accusations of racism and white supremacy resulting from a hiring decision.

Although political representation by racial quota is the effect of government policy, it is not yet respectable to call for it explicitly. When President Bill Clinton tried to appoint Lani Guinier as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights her appointment failed, in part because of Miss Guinier’s advocacy of representation by race. In her view, if blacks were 13 percent of the US population, 13 percent of seats in Congress should be set aside for them. It does not cause much comment, however, when the Democratic Party applies this thinking to its selection of delegates to presidential conventions. Each state party files an affirmative action plan with the national party, and many states set quotas. For the 2008 Democratic Convention, California mandated an over-representation of non-white delegates. Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics were only 4.6, 5.2, and 21.1 percent, respectively, of the Democratic electorate, but had to be 16, 9, and 26 percent of the delegates. Other states had similar quotas. Procedures of this kind do lead to diversity of delegates but suggest that race is more important than policy. Perhaps it is. In Cincinnati, where blacks are 40 to 45 percent of the population, Mayor Charlie Luken complained that the interests of blacks and whites seemed so permanently in conflict that “race gets injected into every discussion as a result.” In other words, any issue can become racial. In 2004, the Georgia legislature passed a bill to stop fraud by requiring voters to show a state-issued ID at the polls. People without drivers’ licenses could apply for an ID for a nominal fee. Black legislators felt so strongly that this was an attempt to limit the black vote that they did not merely vote against the law; practically the entire black delegation stormed out of the Capitol when the measure passed over their objections. In 2009, when Congress voted a stimulus bill to get the economy out of recession, some governors considered refusing some federal funds because there were too many strings attached. Jim Clyburn, a black South Carolina congressman and House Majority Whip, complained that rejecting any funding would be a “slap in the face of African-Americans.” Race divides Cook County, Illinois, which contains Chicago. In 2007, when the black president of the county board, Todd Stroger, could not get his budget passed, his floor leader William Beavers-also black—complained that it was “because he’s black.” He said there was only one real question: 'Who’s gonna control the county—white or black—that’s all this is.

Dr Todd Feinberg writes of a patient, Lizzy, who suffered strokes in her occipital lobes. As can happen in such cases, her brain didn’t immediately process the fact she’d gone ‘suddenly and totally’ blind, so it continued projecting its hallucinated model of the world. Visiting her hospital bed, Feinberg enquired if she was having trouble with her vision in any way. ‘No,’ she said. When he asked her to take a look around and tell him what she saw, she moved her head accordingly. ‘It’s good to see friends and family, you know,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel like I’m in good hands.’ But there was nobody else there. ‘Tell me their names,’ said Feinberg. ‘I don’t know everybody. They’re my brother’s friends.’ ‘Look at me. What am I wearing?’ ‘A casual outfit. You know, a jacket and pants. Mostly navy blue and maroon.’ Feinberg was in his hospital whites. Lizzy continued their chat smiling and acting ‘as if she had not a care in the world’.

Ben may be a skeptic, but he's curious enough to be at my house Saturday afternoon when Maeve arrives along with her ghost-hunting team. "This is Todd and Evan, who'll handle the technical aspects tonight," she says, introducing the two burly young men who are unloading camera gear from a white van. They are brothers with identical red beards and they look so much alike that I can only tell them apart by their different T-shirts. Evan's is Star Wars, Todd's is Alien. I'm surprised that neither is wearing Ghostbusters. A VW comes up the driveway and parks behind the white van. "And that'll be Kim, our team sensitive," says Maeve. Out of the VW emerges a stick-thin blonde with cheeks so hollow that I wonder if she has recently suffered an illness. She takes a few steps toward us and suddenly stops, staring up at the house. She stands motionless for so long that Ben finally asks, "What's going on with her?" "She's fine," says Maeve. "She's probably just trying to get a feeling for the place and detect any vibrations.