Tour Ending Quotes

Keep driving," said a soft voice in my ear. "She will not bite if you keep driving." Fuck that. Fuck that idea like the fucking Captain of the Thai Fuck Team fucking at the fucking Tour de Fuck.

Stealing ideas from contemporaries is rude and tasteless. Stealing from the long dead is considered literary and admirable. The same is true of grave-robbing. Loot your local cemetery and find yourself mired in social awkwardness. But unearth the tomb of an ancient king and you can feel free to pop off his toe rings. You'll probably end up on a book tour, or bagging an honorary degree or two.

We were never organized readers who would see a book through to its end in any sory of logical order. We weave in and out of words like tourists on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour. Put a book down in the kitchen to go to the bathroom and you might return to find it gone, replaced by another of equal interest. We are indiscriminate.

Slender Youth. A tour companion who may be either a lost prince or a girl/princess in disguise. In the latter case it is tactful to pretend you think she is a boy. She/he will be ignorant, hasty and shy, and will need hauling out of trouble quite a lot. But she/he will grow up in the course of the Tour. In fact she/he will be the only Companion who will change in any way. Quite often, she/he will soon exhibit a very useful talent for magic and end up by hauling everyone else out of trouble. But this will not be until midway through your second brochure.

Yet for all the depression no one ever quit. When someone quit, we couldn't believe it. 'I'm becoming a rafting instructor on the Colorado River,' they said. 'I'm touring college towns with my garage band.' We were dumbfounded. It was like they were from another planet. Where had they found the derring-do? What would they do about car payments? We got together for going away drinks on their final day and tried to hide our envy while reminding ourselves that we still had the freedom and luxury to shop indiscriminately.

I had seen that look before, on the faces of tourists visiting the Texas Book Depository in Dallas where Lee Harvey Oswald took the shots at JFK. I took that tour and met some conspiracy buffs, all of us standing at the gunman’s window and looking down to the spot where the motorcade passed. It’s right there below the window, an easy shot at a slow-moving car. No mystery, just a kid and a rifle and a tragedy. They came looking for dark and terrible revelations and instead found out something even more dark and terrible: that their lives were trite and boring.

It might be the end of this chapter. But, for us, our story is only just beginning.

Female Mercenary. This will be a companion on your Tour. She is usually tall, thin and wiry, silent, and neurotic. Sex scares her. This is because she either came from a nunnery or was raped as a child. Or both. Somehow this inspired her to become a mercenary and she is very good at her job. You can rely on her absolutely in a fight. She can usually kill two people at once while guarding your back in between. The rest of the time, she will irritate you with lots of punctilious weapons cleaning and a perpetual insistence that a proper watch be kept. Mostly, she will have no magic talents, but sometimes, in an emergency, she will come up with a gift or vision. You will end up grudgingly admiring her.

There is no halfway. You don’t, it turns out, sell out a little bit. Maybe you thought you were just going to show a little ankle – okay, maybe a little calf, too – but in the end, you’re taking on the whole front line of the Pittsburgh Steelers on a dirty shag carpet.

For over 220 years, Marines have served at the end of America’s operational reach—on freedom’s far frontiers. These Marines are the backbone of the ARG/MEU (SOC) team, our regional commanders’ force of choice for both forward presence and crisis response.

It is the glory of London that it is always ending and beginning anew, and that a visitor, with a good eye and indefatigable feet, will find in her travels all the Londons she has ever met in the pages of books, one atop the other, like the strata of the Earth.

And the cosmos ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper.

She shrugged. “Lucas gave me his laptop until the end of the tour.” Red cloth. Angry bull. Clenched fists. Don’t kill Lucas. He’s not worth the jail time.

Fuck that. Fuck that idea like the fucking captain of the Thai Fuck Team fucking at the fucking Tour de Fuck.

I’m not sure where I go when I spin wheels for hours on end like that, except into the rapture of doing nothing deeply—although ‘nothing,’ in this case, involves a tantrum of pedal strokes on a burdened bicycle along a euphemism for a highway through the Himalaya.

The band was right behind me and before I knew what hit me, Kyle had me in his arms and was whirling me around excitedly. “You were brilliant!” he cried, giddy as a kindergartner who’d just ridden a bike for the first time. “That was the best ending to a show we’ve ever had! They love you! The band loves you! I love you! We’ve got to take you on tour with us. You could be our little virgin mascot!

These are the end products of the Masterminds of Safety and Ethics, bulked up on cheese that contains no cheese, chips fried in oil that isn’t really oil, overcooked gray disks of what might once upon a time have been meat, a steady diet of Ho-Hos and muffins, butterless popcorn, sugarless soda, flavorless light beer. A docile, uncomprehending herd, led slowly to a dumb, lingering, and joyless slaughter.

the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it’.

Maintenant tu n'as plus de refuges. Tu as peur, tu attends que tout s'arrête, la pluie, les heures, le flot des voitures, la vie, les hommes, le monde, que tout s'écroule, les murailles, les tours, les planchers et les plafonds; que les hommes et les femmes, les vieillards et les enfants, les chiens, les chevaux, les oiseaux, un à un, tombent à terre, paralysés, pestiférés, épileptiques; que le marbre s'effrite, que le bois se pulvérise, que les maisons s'abattent en silence, que les pluies diluviennes dissolvent les peintures, disjoignent les chevilles des armoires centenaires, déchiquettent les tissus, fassent fondre l'encre des journaux; q'un feu sans flammes ronge les marches des escaliers; que les rues s'effondrent en leur exact milieu, découvrant le labyrinthe béant des égouts; que la rouille et la brume envahissent la ville.

He ended his tour next to the small bed. Then, just like that, he jumped onto her lap and circled, his large white paws finding soft purchase on her thighs. Kya sat frozen, her arms slightly raised, so as not to interfere with his maneuvering. Finally, he settled as though he had nested here every night of his life. He looked at her. Gently she touched his head, then scratched his neck. A loud purr erupted like a current. She closed her eyes at such easy acceptance. A deep pause in a lifetime of longing.

The Bible begins with paradise lost, at which time pain, suffering, and death first entered the human race. The Bible ends with paradise regained, at which time pain, suffering, and death will be a thing of the past.

A sampler of England's hottest 'chefs' would include a mostly hairless young blond lad named Jamie Oliver, who is referred to as the Naked Chef. As best as I can comprehend, he's a really rich guy who pretends he scoots around on a Vespa, hangs out in some East End cold-water flat, and cooks green curry for his 'mates'. He's a TV chef, so few actually eat his food. I've never seen him naked. I believe the 'Naked' refers to his 'simple, straightforward, unadorned' food; though I gather that a great number of matronly housewives would like to believe otherwise. Every time I watch his show, I want to go back in time and bully him at school.

Did I tell you about Anton?" Loots said. Anton?" I shook my head. It was a week ago, Loots said. There had been a knock on the door of his apartment and when he opened it his old friend Anton was standing there. Anton was a clown. He belonged to a circus that toured the provinces, playing to small towns and villages. They talked about the old days for a while, but Anton became increasingly restless and distracted. In the end Loots had to ask him if there was something wrong. This is going to sound strange." The clown coughed nervously into his fist. "It's The Invisible Man. He's disappeared." Loots stared at his friend. He just vanished," Anton said, "into thin air." The Invisible Man?" Loots said. Yes." He's disappeared?" I told you it would sound strange," Anton said.

The winner is the person who accepts who he or she is and gets on with his or her life; the loser is the person who spends his or her lifetime lamenting the unfairness of it all, does nothing, accomplishes nothing, and ends up embittered and, of course, with nothing.

They ended up at the Old Corner Bookstore, which Brian had read about in a tour guide to Boston. "Longfellow and Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes used to read here. Let's go in." Brian nudged the girls until they obeyed. It was a regular bookstore, less history-minded than Brian had expected. In fact, the local history shelves were quite mangeable. I'll buy one book, he thought. This will get me launched in actual reading. Out of the zillions of choices, I'll find one here. Brian picked out Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. It was thick and somehow exciting, with its chapter headings and scholarly notes and bibliography.

I also remember catching the eye of the few conscientious objectors in the terminal, the people opposed to the war but afraid to speak up. There was no hate in their eyes, only pity. Sadness. Knowledge that I might be necessary, but that we shouldn’t be proud that I was necessary. That’s how I saw myself and my company by the end of my second tour. I didn’t hate what we did so much as hate the need for it all. No one should applaud this. We should bow our heads not in thanks but in sadness.

"I'll spend my life pretending--" she sings. "That you're a verse without an ending.

There were times that I may have broken the rules for justice. I may have done things that were wrong but it was for the right reasons.

Spend all your time burning bridges and you’ll end up all wet when you have to swim to shore on the return.

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide. (Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?) Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other. In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own. I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel. Is there a tunnel?" he said.

Eventually they climb sixteen steps into the Gallery of Mineralogy. The guide shows them a gate from Brazil and violet amethysts and a meteorite on a pedestal that he claims is as ancient as the solar system itself. Then he leads them single file down two twisting staircases and along several corridors and stops outside an iron door with a single keyhole. “End of tour,” he says. A girl says, “But what’s through there?” “Behind this door is another locked door, slightly smaller.” “And what’s behind that?” “A third locked door, smaller yet.” “What’s behind that?” “A fourth door, and a fifth, on and on until you reach a thirteenth, a little locked door no bigger than a shoe.” The children lean forward. “And then?” “Behind the thirteenth door”—the guide flourishes one of his impossibly wrinkled hands—“is the Sea of Flames.” Puzzlement. Fidgeting. “Come now. You’ve never heard of the Sea of Flames?” The children shake their heads. Marie-Laure squints up at the naked bulbs strung in three-yard intervals along the ceiling; each sets a rainbow-colored halo rotating in her vision. The guide hangs his cane on his wrist and rubs his hands together. “It’s a long story. Do you want to hear a long story?” They nod. He clears his throat. “Centuries ago, in the place we now call Borneo, a prince plucked a blue stone from a dry riverbed because he thought it was pretty. But on the way back to his palace, the prince was attacked by men on horseback and stabbed in the heart.” “Stabbed in the heart?” “Is this true?” A boy says, “Hush.” “The thieves stole his rings, his horse, everything. But because the little blue stone was clenched in his fist, they did not discover it. And the dying prince managed to crawl home. Then he fell unconscious for ten days. On the tenth day, to the amazement of his nurses, he sat up, opened his hand, and there was the stone. “The sultan’s doctors said it was a miracle, that the prince never should have survived such a violent wound. The nurses said the stone must have healing powers. The sultan’s jewelers said something else: they said the stone was the largest raw diamond anyone had ever seen. Their most gifted stonecutter spent eighty days faceting it, and when he was done, it was a brilliant blue, the blue of tropical seas, but it had a touch of red at its center, like flames inside a drop of water. The sultan had the diamond fitted into a crown for the prince, and it was said that when the young prince sat on his throne and the sun hit him just so, he became so dazzling that visitors could not distinguish his figure from light itself.” “Are you sure this is true?” asks a girl. “Hush,” says the boy. “The stone came to be known as the Sea of Flames. Some believed the prince was a deity, that as long as he kept the stone, he could not be killed. But something strange began to happen: the longer the prince wore his crown, the worse his luck became. In a month, he lost a brother to drowning and a second brother to snakebite. Within six months, his father died of disease. To make matters even worse, the sultan’s scouts announced that a great army was gathering in the east. "The prince called together his father’s advisers. All said he should prepare for war, all but one, a priest, who said he’d had a dream. In the dream the Goddess of the Earth told him she’d made the Sea of Flames as a gift for her lover, the God of the Sea, and was sending the jewel to him through the river. But when the river dried up, and the prince plucked it out, the goddess became enraged. She cursed the stone and whoever kept it.

No, no. Keep driving,” said a soft voice in my ear. “She will not bite if you keep driving.” Fuck that. Fuck that idea like the fucking captain of the Thai Fuck Team fucking at the fucking Tour de Fuck.

A woman’s body was a work of art. One to be explored and appreciated. Every curve, every valley, every freckle a treasure to discover. Every nerve ending a challenge to ignite with pleasure. Now, where to start?

Timmy has no intention of going on the trip. He has never been on a sightseeing tour before and according to him, he is never going on one, end of discussion. Who wants to see a stupid planet called Earth, anyway?

I was once asked to pick a couple of records for an interview I was doing on Radio 2. I picked one by Will Oldham and one by Joanna Newsom. Someone on the production phoned me to say that I couldn't have either record because they were 'too alternative' and I could just pick two from their playlist. Now, personally, I think that Radio 2's listeners would dig both Joanna Newsom and Will Oldham if they heard their records, and that the fact they don't get to hear them contributes to the cultural wasteland we live in. I told them that I'd been to see Joanna Newsom in the Albert Hall a couple of weeks before and it had been sold out. How could she be 'too alternative'? 'Alternative' and 'mainstream' aren't strictly to do with whether things are popular or minority interest. They are ideological labels. Someone like Joe Pasquale would be called 'mainstream' and regularly pops up on TV, but would play the smaller end of the touring-theatre circuit. If Joanna Newsom can sell out Albert Hall, why can't she get played on Radio 2? I would agree that it's because her work is too layered, challenging and interesting. Think about that. What you get to hear about is filtered, and not filtered to get rid of useless cunts like Joe Pasquale, but of things that might enrich your life.

- Don't look at me like that. I'm so not having sex with you just because you take me to some rinky-drink beer tour. - I don't recall asking, Ms. Brighton, but believe me, this little thing we have will end with us in bed one way or the other.

some nights . . .” “They say the moon is made of green cheese,” Butch said. “And I’m going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight if we don’t get out of here.” He took my hand and led the way across the room. Louise Jane called out to me one last time. “It shouldn’t be a problem leading the haunted lighthouse tour into the Lady’s room, Lucy. You’ll be gone by Halloween, isn’t that right?” Chapter 15 “I hope you had a nice evening, despite how it ended,” Butch said as we walked to his car.

Pay to go inside Neruda's home A body lies there with no dome. But right there in the front hall Lean a fairy against the icy wall. Oh Endless enigmas had the bard! Nice and large and calm backyard Ends In the middle of a rare room Rare portrait of revelishing gloom. Up climbing at the weird snail stair Does make you grasp for some air. And there's a room with bric-a-brac: Old and precious books all in a pack. Dare saying what I liked most of all? Enjoyed seeing visitors having a ball!

In three weeks, the women's team had done more for soccer in the United States than any team had ever done. Yet, the United States Soccer Federation was unprepared and unwelcoming in its acerbic response to the women's success. With petty, resentful, chauvinistic behavior, the federation would bungle what should have been its greatest moment as a national governing body. Its leaders would criticize DiCicco instead of congratulating him, they would threaten to sue the women over an indoor victory tour and they would wait an unacceptably long period before entering into contract negotiations with the team. Then, at the end of the year, the federation would offer a deal that the women found insulting. Unwilling to trust that the federation was bargaining in good faith, the women would boycott a trip to a tournament in Australia. They would become champions of the world, embraced by the president, by the largest crowd ever to watch women play and by the largest television audience for soccer in this country, embraced by everyone, it seemed, but the officials who ran the sport with the vision of a student council. Increasingly, it appeared, the only amateurs left in sports were the people running the federations that governed them.

I’m writing a full-length novel for Reagan in the forthcoming five-book Exodus End series. So you’ll get plenty more of Trey in his next novel. I felt a lot of Trey’s story—and Reagan’s and Ethan’s—was left unfinished in Double Time. So I decided they needed a second book. Good things come to those who wait.

Tim and Andy stood there in head-to-toe leather motocross outfits, covered in road dust, behind me in a dark corner of the hotel’s dining room. Tim has penetrating pale blue eyes with tiny pupils, and the accent of an Englishman from the north – Newcastle, or Leeds maybe. Andy is an American with blond hair and the wholesome, well-fed good looks and accent of the Midwest. Behind them, two high-performance dirt bikes leaned on kickstands in the Hang Meas’ parking lot.      Tim owns a bar/restaurant in Siemreap. Andy is his chef. Go to the end of the world and apparently there will be an American chef there waiting for you.

Disney's theme parks function like the suburban mall, offering middle-class families an escape from crime, pollution, immigrants, the homeless, transportation problems, and work. Managed exoticism, safety, the packaged tour, and the fantasy of consumption cancel out diversity, innovation, imagination, and the uncharted excursion.

You could record a performance, as they were going to do in Rome at the end of the tour, but you could never reproduce the currency of the moment in which a performance pulsed and breathed. This was divine, the closest Alma had come, beyond even sex, which was more an emptying out than a pouring in, a draining of self rather than a merging.

"Lights go green and even with you," she sings, "same old road leading nowhere new." "What about--" Riley's head lifts in surprise hearing my voice, hunger in her eyes. I know it's not only for creative collaboration. "Lights go green, and maybe with you," I say softly, slightly revising the line's ending, "same old road can lead somewhere new.

As you know, the International Poker Tour, by its own admission, knows very little about poker games, one of which ended tragically last week when an IPT-sanctioned tournament aboard a yacht in Australia accidentally used tarot cards instead of playing cards. That’s right, it’s true! Apparently no one noticed until someone laid down a full house and the dealer died.

Touring the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, astute observer of the young Republic, noted the “feverish ardor” of its citizens to accumulate. Yet, even as the typical American “clutches at everything,” the Frenchman wrote, “he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications.” However munificent his possessions, the American hungered for more, an obsession that filled him with “anxiety, fear, and regret, and keeps his mind in ceaseless trepidation.”2

What do you think of your kingdom?" "It's beautiful," I said. And very empty. Where is everyone? "It might even be dangerous to live in such luxury and repose." "This is no place of repose." Amar glanced outside where a sliver of moon glimmered behind clouds. “I am at the mercy of the moon to reveal the secrets of this kingdom. Until then, you must practice what it means to rule. I will test you, as this palace will, in its own way.” I straightened in my seat. “On what?” “Familiarity, you might say.” His voice was low. “All the usual aspects of ruling. I’ll test your fangs and claws and bloodlust.” He stopped to trace the inside of my wrist, and my pulse leapt to meet his touch. I scowled and grabbed my hand back. Treacherous blood. “I’ll test your eyes and ears and thoughts.” “Not geography, then?” I asked, half joking. “It’s useless here.” He shrugged. “You’ll see.” “History?” “Written by the victors,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m not interested in one-sided tales.” “Legends? Folktales?” This time, Amar grinned. “Perhaps. Do you have a favorite tale?” My throat tightened and I thought of Gauri standing outside my door and demanding a story. “Many…And you?” “All of them. Except for tragedies. I cannot abide those.” In the harem, all the wives preferred tragedies. They wanted stories of star-crossed lovers. They wanted betrayal and declarations of love that ended with the speaker dying at their feet. “You don’t find them romantic?” “No,” he said, an edge to his voice. “There is no romance in real grief. Only longing and fury.” He rose to his feet. “Tomorrow, you can tour the palace fully. It’s yours now.

At some point toward the end of the 2016 Australian Open, a nurse asked me to pee in a cup. There was nothing unusual about this—it’s just another part of the procedure, performed by the ITF, the International Tennis Federation, to drug-test athletes and keep the sport clean. I was twenty-eight years old. I’d been peeing in those cups for more than a decade, and I forgot all about the test the moment after it happened, my mind quickly returning to the matter at hand: the next leg of the tour, the next match I’d have to win to get where I still needed to go.

We cannot pick and choose whom among the oppressed it is convenient to support. We must stand with all the oppressed or none of the oppressed. This is a global fight for life against corporate tyranny. We will win only when we see the struggle of working people in Greece, Spain, and Egypt as our own struggle. This will mean a huge reordering of our world, one that turns away from the primacy of profit to full employment and unionized workplaces, inexpensive and modernized mass transit, especially in impoverished communities, universal single-payer health care and a banning of for-profit health care corporations. The minimum wage must be at least $15 an hour and a weekly income of $500 provided to the unemployed, the disabled, stay-at-home parents, the elderly, and those unable to work. Anti-union laws, like the Taft-Hartley Act, and trade agreements such as NAFTA, will be abolished. All Americans will be granted a pension in old age. A parent will receive two years of paid maternity leave, as well as shorter work weeks with no loss in pay and benefits. The Patriot Act and Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which permits the military to be used to crush domestic unrest, as well as government spying on citizens, will end. Mass incarceration will be dismantled. Global warming will become a national and global emergency. We will divert our energy and resources to saving the planet through public investment in renewable energy and end our reliance on fossil fuels. Public utilities, including the railroads, energy companies, the arms industry, and banks, will be nationalized. Government funding for the arts, education, and public broadcasting will create places where creativity, self-expression, and voices of dissent can be heard and seen. We will terminate our nuclear weapons programs and build a nuclear-free world. We will demilitarize our police, meaning that police will no longer carry weapons when they patrol our streets but instead, as in Great Britain, rely on specialized armed units that have to be authorized case by case to use lethal force. There will be training and rehabilitation programs for the poor and those in our prisons, along with the abolition of the death penalty. We will grant full citizenship to undocumented workers. There will be a moratorium on foreclosures and bank repossessions. Education will be free from day care to university. All student debt will be forgiven. Mental health care, especially for those now caged in our prisons, will be available. Our empire will be dismantled. Our soldiers and marines will come home.

The “solar wheel is activated” means that everything that is peripheral is submitted to being directed by the center. This is why in this case movement is just another word for master. It is to tour oneself, to delimit oneself so that, under the direction of the center, entry is gained into all aspects of the personality. This amounts to designating self-knowledge as self-incubation. And in the end the sequence of images takes us to this archetype of the complete man that Plato drew as a perfectly spherical being—that is, total and complete, reuniting in himself both masculine and feminine (the essential elemental body awaiting resurrection in the land of Hurqalya).

Slot machines cater, like the games on computers and phones, to the longing to flee from the oppressive world of dead-end jobs, crippling debt, social stagnation, and a dysfunctional political system. They shape our behavior with constant bursts of stimulation. We become rats in a Skinner box. We frantically pull levers until we are addicted and, finally entranced, by our adrenaline-driven compulsion to achieve fleeting and intermittent rewards. Behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner found that when pigeons and rats did not know when or how much they would be rewarded, they pressed levers or pedals compulsively. Skinner used slot machines as a metaphor for his experiment.27

At New York City’s Rose Center of Earth and Space, we display a timeline spiral of the Universe that begins at the Big Bang and unfolds 13.8 billion years. Uncurled, it’s the length of a football field. Every step you take spans 50 million years. You get to the end of the ramp, and you ask, where are we? Where is the history of our human species? The entire period of time, from a trillion seconds ago to today, from graffiti-prone cave dwellers until now, occupies only the thickness of a single strand of human hair, which we have mounted at the end of that timeline. You think we live long lives, you think civilizations last a long time, but not from the view of the cosmos itself.

But I wasn’t like Archer Sylvan in other ways; I was never given the opportunity to try. Archer would sleep on tour buses with bands or camp in the desert with an actor or do ayahuasca with a politician and come to the realization that he had to divorce his wife and marry his research assistant, whom he now realized he knew twelve lives ago. He got lost for days waiting for a reclusive rock star. He spent $7,000 on stripper tips once, submitted the expense without a receipt (naturally), and was reimbursed even though no stripper ended up in the story. Once, I had to check a second bag on a flight from Europe where I was interviewing an actor and I got a pissed-off call from our managing editor and I never did it again.

If our democracy worked as it should, we would elect wise women and men who made laws for the good of the people and enforced those laws. That, though, is not the way things work. Greedy, power–mad billionaires spend money so that politicians such as George W. Bush can buy elections. Corrupt corporations such as Enron defraud old ladies and commit crimes. And they get away with it. They get away with it because most of us are so afraid of losing the security of our nice, normal lives that we are not willing to risk anything about those lives. We are either afraid to fight or we don’t know how. Or we believe that bad things won’t happen to us. And so, in the end, too many people lose their lives anyway. In Nazi Germany, millions of men who acquiesced to Hitler’s murderous rise to power wound up marching into Russia’s icy wasteland—into the Soviet Army’s machine guns and cannon—to themselves be murdered. In America after 9–11, trusting teenagers who had joined the National Guard found themselves sent to Iraq on extended and additional tours. Our enemy killed many of them because we, citizens of the richest country in the world, did not provide them with body armor. Grieving mothers protested the wasting of their sons’ lives. Nadia McCaffrey defied Bush’s shameful ban on the filming of U.S. soldiers’ coffins returning home from Iraq. She knew, as we all did, that this tyrannical dictum of Bush dishonored our soldiers’ sacrifice. And so she invited the press to the Sacramento International Airport to photograph her son’s flag–draped coffin. Again, I am not comparing George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler, nor America to Germany’s Third Reich. What I do believe is that each of us has the duty to keep the Bushes of the world from becoming anything like Hitler—and to keep America from invading other countries with no just cause. We will never, though, be able to stop corrupt politicians and corporations from doing criminal things until we stop surrendering our power to them. The more we fear to oppose them—the more we want to retreat into the supposed safety of our nice gated communities or downtown lofts—the more powerful people will conspire to ruin our prosperity and wreck our lives.

King of Qin, rides a tiger, touring eight poles Sword's light shining in empty sky from jade Xihe strikes the sun, as glass is sounded Robbed ashes fly to ends, past, present level Dragon head, flows out wine, inviting wine star Golden groove, pipa in the night: “cheng cheng” Dongting rain, upon the feet, comes blowing sheng Wine hearty, drinking moon, causes change of shape Silver clouds, dense and denser, jade temple bright Palace gates, holding affairs, announces one watch Flower house, jade phoenix, sounds seductive, fierce Sea silk fabric, red text, fragrance shallow, clear Yellow beauty, stumbles dance, thousand year vessel Celestial being, candle’s plant wax smoking lightly Goddess of Qing, drunk, tears of deepest waters

L.A. Burning is a great ride, a blast of adrenaline, a lightning-paced insider's tour of the movie business with a memorable heroine in the driver's seat. Cody Bonner is a true original--we're rooting for her from page one, and she holds us in suspense to the very end. Excellent. --JOSEPH FINDER, New York Times bestselling author of House on Fire. Some books stay with you long after you finish them, and I can’t get Cody Bonner’s voice out of my head. Tough, resourceful, and hell-bent on revenge for the death of her twin sister, she leads us on a thrilling yet heartbreaking journey through some of LA’s most glittering—and meanest—streets. Unforgettable, original, and highly recommended. —HILARY DAVIDSON, bestselling author of Her Last Breath

Ben had the most expressive face I’d ever seen. When he told a story, he dove into it, re-enacting each character with a new set of his jaw and cast of his brow. His eyes shone vibrantly, and every time he laughed, it showed in his whole body. Just watching him made me smile. I felt warm around him, and happy, and comfortable. I felt like flannel pajamas, hot cocoa, a teddy bear, and my favorite comedy on DVD. I felt like home. I loved Ben, that’s what I felt. It popped into my head, and I didn’t doubt it for a second. I loved Ben. Well that was settled then, wasn’t it? Then my eyes darted to Sage, and I noticed he wasn’t focused on Ben’s story either. He was watching me. He was watching me watch Ben, to be precise, leaning back on his elbows and staring so fixedly that I could practically hear him scratching his way into my brain to listen to what I was thinking. And the minute I felt that, I was desperate to take back what I’d thought, and make sure he hadn’t understood. Especially since I had this strong feeling that if he believed I loved Ben, he’d disappear. Maybe not right away, but as soon as he could. And that would be the end of the world. “Okay, Sage, your turn,” Rayna said. “What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done in the middle of a social function?” Instantly Sage’s intense stare was gone, replaced by a relaxed pose and a charming smile. “Um, I would say doing a spit take in front of Clea’s mom, several senators, and the Israeli foreign minister would probably cover it.” “You did that?” I asked. “Oh yes, he did,” Rayna nodded. “And the minister still offered you his house in Tel Aviv for the honeymoon? That’s shocking.” “Rayna is particularly charming,” Sage noted. “Thank you, darling.” She batted her eyes at him like a Disney princess. “What happened?” Ben asked. “Piri spiked your drink with garlic?” “You say that like it’s a joke,” Sage said. “I’m pretty sure she did.” “She must really have it out for you,” Ben said. “Palinka’s Hungarian holy water. You don’t mess with that.” “Speaking of holy water, I so did not get that on our trip,” Rayna put in. “Clea and I were touring one of the cathedrals in Italy, and in front of the whole tour I go, “That’s too cute! Look, they have birdbaths in the church!

In your light we see light. —Psalm 36:9 (NIV) ELENA ZELAYETA, BLIND CHEF Without warning at age thirty-six, Elena Zelayeta, pregnant with her second child, totally lost her sight. She had been the chef at a popular restaurant she and her husband owned. A sixty-seven-year-old widow now, she continued to prepare her famous Mexican dishes, marketing them with the help of her two sons, the younger of whom she’d never seen. Typical of San Francisco, it was raining when I arrived at her home. The door was opened by a very short, very broad woman with a smile like the sun. Well under five feet tall, “and wide as I am high,” she said, she led me on a fast-paced tour of the sizable house, ending in the kitchen, where pots bubbled and a frying pan sizzled. Was it possible that this woman who moved so swiftly and surely, who was now so unhesitatingly dishing up the meal she’d prepared for the two of us, really blind? She must see, dimly at least, the outlines of things. At the door to the dining room, Elena paused, half a dozen dishes balanced on her arms. “Is the light on?” she asked. No, she confirmed, not the faintest glimmer of light had she seen in thirty years. But she smiled as she said it. “I hear the rain,” she went on as she expertly carved the herb-crusted chicken, “and I’m sure it’s a gray day for the sighted. But for us blind folk, when we walk with God, the sun is always shining.” Let me walk in Your light, Lord, whatever the weather of the world. —Elizabeth Sherrill Digging Deeper: Ps 97:11; 1 Jn 1:5

How did you end up in all this? Working for Rubicon, I mean?’ She shot him a look, and he wondered if he had touched on a sore point. Lucy guided the Land Rover past a sluggish tanker truck and set her gaze on the view through the grimy windshield. ‘It’s no big deal,’ she said, at length. ‘I was Army green for a good while. No job for a lady, so my mom used to say. But I got a good eye, and I like guns. Delta was recruiting for Foxtrot Troop, so I opted in. Stayed for a tour.’ ‘I thought that was a myth,’ said Marc. ‘About Delta Force having an all-female squad . . .’ ‘Sure it is,’ Lucy replied evenly. ‘Just like it’s not true that British Intelligence has its own covert strike teams.’ ‘Fair point,’ he allowed. ‘Uncle Sam may be old-fashioned, but he ain’t stupid. Sometimes girls can get where boys can’t

Pan, The House of Bernarda Alba, Transform Caithness: Hunter, Be Near Me, Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us, The Bacchae (also Lincoln Center), Elizabeth Gordon Quinn, Home: Glasgow, and Black Watch, which toured internationally and for which he won Olivier and Critics’ Circle awards. He was Associate Director of the Traverse Theatre from 1996 to 2001, Paines Plough from 2001 to 2005, the National Theatre of Scotland from 2005 to 2012, and was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University in the 2010–2011 academic year. JACK THORNE writes for theater, film, television, and radio. His theater credits include Hope and Let the Right One In, both directed by John Tiffany, Junkyard, a Headlong, Rose Theatre Kingston, Bristol Old Vic & Theatr Clwyd co-production, The Solid Life of Sugar Water for the Graeae Theatre Company and the National Theatre,

Toward the end of our sessions, Daniel and Peter spotted an undertaker polishing an old hearse while visiting the nearby village of Monmouth. It was love at first sight, and we ended up buying the poor old jalopy. After celebrating the purchase of this new Bauhausmobile, Peter decided to take the studio owner's daughter and her girlfriend for a spin down the unlit winding country roads of the Wye Valley. Drunk to the gills, he ended up driving the crate into a ditch. Despite this incident, and much to the chagrin of our manager, Harry Isles, this clapped-out crate became the band's official touring vehicle. It was constantly breaking down, and over time, many motorists would be entertained and possibly quite disturbed by the sight of four black-clad, corpse-like figures pushing their funereal conveyance down the highways and byways of Great Britain.

In one of our early conversations, Bob said to me, "I like Einstein as a character, because everybody knows who he is." In a sense, we didn't need to tell an Einstein story because everybody who eventually saw our Einstein brought their own story with them. In the four months that we toured Einstein in Europe we had many occasions to meet with our audiences, and people occasionally would ask us what it "meant." But far more often people told us what it meant to them, sometimes even giving us plot elucidation and complete scenario. The point about Einstein was clearly not what it "meant" but that it was meaningful as generally experienced by the people who saw it. From the viewpoint of the creators, of course, that is exactly the way it was constructed to work. Though we made no attempt at all to tell a story, we did use dramaturgical devices to create a clearly paced overall dramatic shape. For instance, a "finale" is a dramaturgical device; an "epilogue" is another. Using contrasting sections, like a slow trial scene followed by a fast dance scene, is a dramaturgical device, and we used such devices freely. I am sure that the absence of direct connotative "meaning" made it all the easier for the spectator to personalize the experience by supplying his own special "meaning" out of his own experience, while the work itself remained resolutely abstract. As to the use of three visual schemes, or images, Bob often mentioned that he envisioned them in three distinct ways: (1) a landscape seen at a distance (the Field/Spaceship scenes); (2) still lifes seen at a middle distance (the Trial scenes); and (3) portraits seen as in a closeup (the Knee Plays). As these three perspectives rotated through the four acts of the work, they created the sequence of images in an ordered scale. Furthermore, the recurrence of the images implied a kind of quasi-development. For example, the sequence of Train scenes from the Act I, scene 1 Train, to the "night train" of Act II and finally the building which resembled in perspective the departing night train, presented that sequence of images in a reductive order (each one became less "train-like") and at the same time more focused and energized. The same process applies to the sequence of Trial scenes (ending with a bar of light representing the bed) as well as the Field/Spaceship, with the final scene in the interior of the spaceship serving as a kind of apocalyptic grand finale of the whole work. Each time an image reappeared, it was altered to become more abstract and, oddly enough, more powerful. The way these three sequences were intercut with each other, as well as with the portrait-scale Knee Plays, served to heighten the dramatic effect.

Maybe, but such cycles are not just a Gallic idiosyncracy. Take an English phrase like ‘up above’, and you’ll discover a no less hyperbolic history. Old English ufan meant ‘on up’ – it was the locative case of the preposition uf ‘up’. But this little ufan was not considered nearly sturdy enough, so it was reinforced by another preposition, be ‘by’, to give a beefier be-ufan ‘by on up’. But before long, be-ufan was assaulted by the forces of erosion, and ended up as a mere bufan. Naturally, the syllabically-challenged bufan had to be pumped up again, this time by the preposition an ‘on’, to give an-bufan ‘on by on up’. Later on, anbufan was ground down by erosion, and – to cut a long story short – ended up as the modest above. But it seems that a mere above doesn’t soar nearly high enough nowadays, so we sometimes feel the need to reinforce it with ‘up’, to give up above – literally ‘up on by on up’.

Do I look stupid to you? That thing is just plain crazy.” “And when was the last time you did something crazy?” Joss cocked an eyebrow. Was he kidding? “You have to ask?” A slow lazy grin warmed his face. “That wasn’t crazy. That was hot.” She rolled her eyes. He would say that, wouldn’t he? “My skirt.” “Is long.” He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Too long to flash anything when you fall off.” “When huh?” He nodded. “When.” “I’m more worried it might end up above my head.” He laughed but stopped abruptly when she glared at him. “I promise I won’t look when you get tossed.” Joss glanced around her at the full restaurant. “And what about the other hundred people in here?” “Oh come on.” He affected an air of fake severity. “Good decent southern folk would surely avert their eyes from a lady in a state of undress.” She snorted. Half the men in here would trample over their wives for a glimpse of panties.

It is sometimes said that, by virtue of his psychological make-up, man cannot live unless he attaches himself to an object that is greater than himself and outlives him, and this necessity has been attributed to a supposedly common need not to perish entirely. Life, they say, is only tolerable if one can see some purpose in it, if it has a goal and one that is worth pursuing. But the individual in himself is not sufficient as an end for himself. He is too small a thing. Not only is he confined in space, he is also narrowly limited in time. So when we have no other objective than ourselves, we cannot escape from the feeling our efforts are finally destined to vanish into nothing, since that is where we must return. But we recoil from the idea of annihilation. In such a state, we should not have the strength to live, that is to say to act and struggle, since nothing is to remain of all the trouble that we take. In a word, the state of egoism is in contradiction with human nature and hence too precarious to endure.11

...I shall let [Anne] Wallace put the case herself, at what I think is necessary length: 'As travel in general becomes physically easier, faster, and less expensive, more people want and are able to arrive at more destinations with less unpleasant awareness of their travel process. At the same time the availability of an increasing range of options in conveyance, speed, price, and so forth actually encouraged comparisons of these different modes...and so an increasingly positive awareness of process that even permitted semi-nostalgic glances back at the bad old days...Then, too, although local insularity was more and more threatened...people also quite literally became more accustomed to travel and travellers, less fearful of 'foreign' ways, so that they gradually became able to regard travel as an acceptable recreation. Finally, as speeds increased and costs decreased, it simply ceased to be true that the mass of people were confined to that circle of a day's walk: they could afford both the time and the money to travel by various means and for purely recreational purposes...And as walking became a matter of choice, it became a possible positive choice: since the common person need not necessarily be poor. Thus, as awareness of process became regarded as advantageous, 'economic necessity' became only one possible reading (although still sometimes a correct one) in a field of peripatetic meanings that included 'aesthetic choice'.' It sounds a persuasive case. It is certainly possible that something like the shift in consciousness that Wallace describes may have taken place by the 'end' (as conventionally conceived) of the Romantic period, and influenced the spread of pedestrianism in the 1820s and 1830s; even more likely that such a shift was instrumental in shaping the attitudes of Victorian writing in the railway age, and helped generate the apostolic fervour with which writers like Leslie Stephen and Robert Louis Stevenson treated the walking tour. But it fails to account for the rise of pedestrianism as I have narrated it.

Thegirls also ordered catalogues for items they could never buy, and theLisbons' mailbox filled up once again: furniture catalogues fromScottshruptine, high-end clothing, exotic vacations. Unable to goanywhere, the girls traveled in their imaginations to goldtipped Siamesetemples, or past an old man with bucket and leaf broom tidying amoss-carpeted speck of Japan. As soon as we learned the names of thesebrochures we sent for them ourselves to see where the girls wanted togo. Far East Adventures. Footloose Tours. Tunnel to China Tours. OrientExpress. We got them all. And, flipping pages, hiked through dustypasses with the girls, stopping every now and then to help them take offtheir backpacks, placing our hands on their warm, moist shoulders andgazing off at papaya sunsets. We drank tea with them in a waterpavilion, above blazing goldfish. We did whatever we wanted to, andCecilia hadn't killed herself: she was a bride in Calcutta, with a redveil and the soles of her feet dyed with henna. The only way we couldfeel close to the girls was through these impossible excursions, whichhave scarred us forever, making us happier with dreams than wives.

Armed combatants in war, who surrender their individuality and usually their capacity for moral choice, become part of a herd of dehumanized killers. Sex in wartime is reduced to its crudest biological function. It is referred to in marching cadences and ribald small talk like defecation. Pornography, prostitution, and rape are ubiquitous in war zones. In war, empathy, compassion, and love are banished. Human beings, especially women, become objects, to exploit or kill. The violence and commodification of human beings for profit are the quintessential expressions of global capitalism. Our corporate masters are pimps. We are all being debased and degraded, rendered impoverished and powerless, to service the cruel and lascivious demands of the corporate elite. And when they tire of us, or when we are no longer of use, we are discarded. If the United States accepts prostitution as legal and permissible in a civil society, as Germany has done, we will take one more collective step toward the global plantation being built by the powerful. The fight against prostitution is the fight against a dehumanizing corporate capitalism that begins, but will not end, with the subjugation of impoverished girls and women.

Barnaby Fanning was the lone offspring of a marriage between two of New Orleans’ finest families. Growing up in a Garden District mansion so iconic it was a stop on all the tours, the future heir to sugar and cotton fortunes both, his adolescence spent at debutante balls during the season and trips abroad during the summer: it was the stuff of true Southern gentlemen. But Bucky always refused the first table at a restaurant. He carried a pocket calculator so he could tip a strict twelve percent. When his father nudged him out of the nest after graduating Vanderbilt (straight Cs), Bucky fluttered only as far as the carriage house because no other address would suit. He sported head-to-toe Prada bought on quarterly pilgrimages to Neiman Marcus in Dallas, paid for by Granny Charbonneau. At the slightest perceived insult, Bucky would fly into rages, becoming so red-faced and spitty in the process that even those on the receiving end of his invective grew concerned for his health. During the holidays, Bucky would stand over the trash and drop in Christmas cards unopened while keeping mental score of who’d sent them. He never accepted a dinner invitation without first asking who else would be there. Bucky Fanning had never been known to write a thank-you note.

I mean that after the little accident with your mom, you'd think you'd never come out here again." My heart stops. I'm not exaggerating. I swear, for a pure second, my chest seized and all the blood flowing in my veins pauses. I can't believe he would say something like that. From the look on everyone's faces, they can't believe it either. Aidan's the first to react as he growls, "Shut up! You jerk...how can you say something like that?" Dunstan ignores Aidan's outburst as he keeps his eyes trained on me. His face is indifferent, but I know he's smirking on the inside. Why's he doing this? What does he want me to do? React? I would, if I could get any movement back in my freakin' legs. However, they seem to be paralyzed at the moment. I settle for glaring at him. "Don't tell me you haven't gotten over it. It's been, what? Ten years since?" "He said shut up!" Nadia snarls. She bares her teeth in primal fury and seems almost ready to pounce on him. But if he catches on, Dunstan doesn't show it. "I just think it's amazing you'd still come out here. I know I wouldn't." "Mr. Lebelle, it is in my power to turn this boat around and end this tour early. So I suggest that you stop this conversation at once," Babette threatens him. She doesn't shout, but her iron tone is just as—if not more—frightening as any yelling could be.

Eight Bells: Robert J. Kane ‘55D died June 3, 2017, in Palm Harbor, Florida. He came to MMA by way of Boston College. Bob or “Killer,” as he was affectionately known, was an independent and eccentric soul, enjoying the freedom of life. After a career at sea as an Officer in the U.S. Navy and in the Merchant Marine he retired to an adventurous single life living with his two dogs in a mobile home, which had originally been a “Yellow School Bus.” He loved watching the races at Daytona, Florida, telling stories about his interesting deeds about flying groceries to exotic Caribbean Islands, and misdeeds with mysterious ladies he had known. For years he spent his summers touring Canada and his winters appreciating the more temperate weather at Fort De Soto in St. Petersburg, Florida…. Enjoying life in the shadow of the Sunshine Bridge, Bob had an artistic flare, a positive attitude and a quick sense of humor. Not having a family, few people were aware that he became crippled by a hip replacement operation gone bad at the Bay Pines VA Hospital. His condition became so bad that he could hardly get around, but he remained in good spirits until he suffered a totally debilitating stroke. For the past 6 years Bob spent his time at various Florida Assisted Living Facilities, Nursing Homes and Palliative Care Hospitals. His end came when he finally wound up as a terminal patient at the Hospice Facility in Palm Harbor, Florida. Bob was 86 years old when he passed. He will be missed….

…we encourage you to trust your coping plan over the long haul. It is useful to acknowledge your small and daily successes, such as facing things you would typically avoid. There will likely be daily examples of slipups, too, but, similar to looking at a garden, we encourage you to focus on the flowers as much, if not more so, than you do the weeds. As an aside, both of us have taken up bike riding in the past few years. In our appreciation of the multiday, grand stage races in Europe, such as the Tour de France, we have seen a metaphor that helps to illustrate the goal of coping with ADHD. These multiple stage bike races last from 3 or 4 days on up to 3 weeks. Different days are spent climbing steep mountain roads, traversing long flat stages of over a hundred miles that end in all out sprints to the finish line, and individual time trials where each rider goes out alone and covers the distance as quickly as possible, known as “the race of truth.” The grand champion of a multiday race, however, is the rider whose cumulative time for all the stages is the fastest. That is, if you ride well enough, day-in and day-out, you will be a champion even though you may not be the first rider to cross the finish line on any single day’s race. Similarly, managing ADHD is an endurance sport. You need not cope perfectly all day, every day. The goal is to make progress, cope well enough, handle setbacks without giving up, and over time you will recognize your victory. Just keep pedaling.

George W. Bush’s initiative to fight AIDS around the world, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), saved millions of lives in Africa and elsewhere. From the program’s launch in 2003 to the time Bush left office, the number of HIV-infected people in Africa getting proper treatment went from fewer than fifty thousand to two million. 19 His efforts didn’t go unnoticed by the people of the African continent. When President Bush took a farewell tour of Africa near the end of his second term, massive crowds of grateful Africans cheered for him. 20 Despite massive spending increases spearheaded by Obama, he cut funding for PEPFAR21 and deprived hundreds of thousands of people around of treatment. This inexplicable decision had a devastating effect on Africa, where most AIDS deaths occur. 22 The AIDS Healthcare Foundation was highly critical of Obama’s cuts, which came after he had promised to expand the fight against AIDS months earlier: “This latest action merely confirms what people with HIV/ AIDS and their advocates have long suspected—the President simply is not committed to fighting global AIDS. Coming on the heels of the President’s flowery rhetoric last December, the cynicism is simply breathtaking,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which provides free HIV/ AIDS medical care to over 125,000 people in 26 countries abroad. 23 The lesson for Africans: American friendship was fickle and patronizing and they couldn’t trust our promises. And we wonder why ISIS propaganda was so attractive to North Africans.

Dubrovnik, Croatia Dubrovnik’s old architecture, all wrapped within its ancient stone walls, have made this city a World Heritage Site. It’s an old sea port that sits above the Adriatic Sea. Its background, from medieval times was trade between the east and Europe and the city rivalled Venice for its reach and connections. Today, however, the principle economy is based on tourism. The old town is a warren of narrow, cobbled streets, sometimes steep, but pedestrianised which makes it easy to walk. However, be careful – signs do not always point to where they say they are going – many of them are old and the hotels, restaurants, bus stations have moved. The City Walls might look familiar to fans of Game of Thrones – many scenes were filmed here and there are Game of Thrones tours to visit the film’s settings. The area suffered a devastating earthquake in the 17th century, therefore much of the original architecture did not survive. The Sponza Palace, near the Bell Tower, is one of the few Gothic buildings left in the city. The Stradun is the main street in the Old Town – restaurants, shops and bars all pour out onto here. It’s lively, especially towards the end of the day. Don’t forget that the city’s location on the coast means that it also has beautiful beaches. Lapad Beach is two miles outside of town, and has a chilled atmosphere. Banje Beach is closer to the old town. It has an entrance fee and is livelier. One of the reasons Dubrovnok appeals to solo travellers is because it has a low crime rate. In addition, its cobbled streets and artistic shops all make browsing easy.

Not long ago I was in Istanbul, Turkey. While there I toured the Topkapi Palace—the former royal palace of the Ottoman sultans and center of the Ottoman Empire. Among the many artifacts collected throughout the centuries and on display was an item I found quite remarkable—the sword of the prophet Muhammad. There, under protective glass and illuminated by high-tech lighting, was the fourteen-hundred-year-old sword of the founder of Islam. As I looked at the sword with its curved handle and jeweled scabbard, I thought how significant it is that no one will ever visit a museum and be shown a weapon that belonged to Jesus. Jesus brings freedom to the world in a way different from Pharaoh, Alexander, Caesar, Muhammad, Napoleon, and Patton. Jesus sets us free not by killing enemies but by being killed by enemies and forgiving them … by whom I mean us. Forgiveness and cosuffering love is the truth that sets us free—free from the false freedom inflicted by swords ancient and modern. Muhammad could fight a war in the name of freedom to liberate his followers from Meccan oppression, but Jesus had a radically different understanding of freedom. And lest this sound like crass Christian triumphalism, my real question is this: Do we Christians secretly wish that Jesus were more like Muhammad? It’s not an idle question. The moment the church took to the Crusades in order to fight Muslims, it had already surrendered its vision of Jesus to the model of Muhammad. Muhammad may have thought freedom could be found at the end of a sword, but Jesus never did. So are Christians who most enthusiastically support US-led wars against Muslim nations actually trying to turn Jesus into some version of Muhammad? It’s a serious question.

Then something moved on the hall floor, just outside the bars. Her eyes swung there. Sunday Justice sat on his haunches staring at her dark eyes with his green ones. Her heart raced. Locked up alone all these weeks, and now this creature could step wizardlike between the bars. Be with her. Sunday Justice broke the stare and looked down the hall, toward the inmates' talk. Kya was terrified that he would leave her and walk to them. But he looked back at her, blinked in obligatory boredom, and squeezed easily between the bars. Inside. Kya breathed out. Whispered, "Please stay." Taking his time, he sniffed his way around the cell, researching the damp cement walls, the exposed pipes, and the sink, all the while compelled to ignore her. A small crack in the wall was the most interesting to him. She knew because he flicked his thoughts on his tail. He ended his tour next to the small bed. Then, just like that, he jumped onto her lap and circled, his large white paws finding soft purchase on her thighs. Kya sat frozen, her arms slightly raised, so as not to interfere with his maneuvering. Finally, he settled as though he had nested here every night of his life. He looked at her. Gently she touched his head, then scratched his neck. A loud purr erupted like a current. She closed her eyes at such easy acceptance. A deep pause in a lifetime of longing. Afraid to move, she sat stiff until her leg cramped, then shifted slightly to stretch her muscles. Sunday Justice, without opening his eyes, slid off her lap and curled up next to her side. She lay down fully clothed, and they both nestled in. She watched him sleep, then followed. Not falling toward a jolt, but a drifting, finally, into an empty calm. Once during the night, she opened her eyes and watched him sleeping on his back, forepaws stretched one way, hind paws the other.

Society makes a peculiar offer to its citizenry: we have a job, if you want it. Here it is. You must stand between the predators and the innocents of the world and hold the line with your blood. Pay is modest—and rendered grudgingly. You will labor across hours, long and ungodly, that will test the limits of exhaustion and tedium. Family will suffer your absence. You will miss many meaningful moments. You will find yourself shipped to places far away, forbidding, forgotten or assigned to patrol streets savaged by violence, poverty, madness. Your presence will not be welcomed. You will see tragedy, hopelessness and evil at depths that will rend your soul. You will be expected somehow, some way, to keep yourself whole as you drown in these so that you may confront them again the next day. You will be called filthy names. In the course of your duties, you will be attacked, targeted, challenged. Some will try to kill you. They may succeed. The antipathy of the press and the animosity of the public will flank you without end until your final tour of duty. Your every action, every decision, every remark will be the subject of unremitting—and unforgiving—scrutiny. Politicians will exploit you—for good and ill—and sacrifice you to expediency once the exploitation is done. Your mistakes, though honest, will never be forgiven—ever. You will save many but the one you lose will haunt you until your dying day. You will form bonds of brotherhood with your comrades, wordless in their abiding depth, forged in the rough bravery that circumstance compels. You will bury many of those brothers. You will begin each day knowing that you may never see another. This is the job that society offers its citizenry. Do you want it? For most, the answer is an obvious one: no. But for a few, the answer is just as obvious: yes. This is for the few who answer yes.

Faut-il regretter le temps des guerres "à sens" ? souhaiter que les guerres d'aujourd'hui "retrouvent" leur sens perdu ? le monde irait-il mieux, moins bien, indifféremment, si les guerres avaient, comme jadis, ce sens qui les justifiait ? Une part de moi, celle qui a la nostalgie des guerres de résistance et des guerres antifascistes, a tendance à dire : oui, bien sûr ; rien n'est plus navrant que la guerre aveugle et insensée ; la civilisation c'est quand les hommes, tant qu'à faire, savent à peu près pourquoi ils se combattent ; d'autant que, dans une guerre qui a du sens, quand les gens savent à peu près quel est leur but de guerre et quel est celui de leur adversaire, le temps de la raison, de la négociation, de la transaction finit toujours par succéder à celui de la violence ; et d'autant (autre argument) que les guerres sensées sont aussi celles qui, par principe, sont les plus accessibles à la médiation, à l'intervention - ce sont les seules sur lesquelles des tiers, des arbitres, des observateurs engagés, peuvent espérer avoir quelque prise...Une autre part hésite. L'autre part de moi, celle qui soupçonne les guerres à sens d'être les plus sanglantes, celle qui tient la "machine à sens" pour une machine de servitude et le fait de donner un sens à ce qui n'en a pas, c'est-à-dire à la souffrance des hommes, pour un des tours les plus sournois par quoi le Diabolique nous tient, celle qui sait, en un mot, qu'on n'envoie jamais mieux les pauvres gens au casse-pipe qu'en leur racontant qu'ils participent d'une grande aventure ou travaillent à se sauver, cette part-là, donc, répond : "non ; le pire c'était le sens"; le pire c'est, comme disait Blanchot, "que le désastre prenne sens au lieu de prendre corps" ; le pire, le plus terrible, c'est d'habiller de sens le pur insensé de la guerre ; pas question de regretter, non, le "temps maudit du sens". (ch. 10 De l'insensé, encore)

The first time he’d cut off ears because he was there and it was being done, but that was it. He wasn’t one of those who once they were in all that lawlessness couldn’t wait to get going, the ones who weren’t too well put together or were pretty aggressive to start off with and only needed the slightest opportunity to go ape-shit. One guy in his unit, guy they called Big Man, he wasn’t there one or two days when he’d slashed some pregnant woman’s belly open. Farley was himself only beginning to get good at it at the end of his first tour. But the second time, in this unit where there are a lot of other guys who’d also come back and who hadn’t come back just to kill time or to make a couple extra bucks, this second time, in with these guys who are always looking to be put out in front, ape-shit guys who recognize the horror but know it is the very best moment of their lives, he is ape-shit too. In a firefight, running from danger, blasting with guns, you can’t not be frightened, but you can go berserk and get the rush, and so the second time he goes berserk. The second time he fucking wreaks havoc. Living right out there on the edge, full throttle, the excitement and the fear, and there’s nothing in civilian life that can match it. Door gunning. They’re losing helicopters and they need door gunners. They ask at some point for door gunners and he jumps at it, he volunteers. Up there above the action, and everything looks small from above, and he just guns down huge. Whatever moves. Death and destruction, that is what door gunning is all about. With the added attraction that you don’t have to be down in the jungle the whole time. But then he comes home and it’s not better than the first time, it’s worse. Not like the guys in World War II: they had the ship, they got to relax, someone took care of them, asked them how they were. There’s no transition. One day he’s door gunning in Vietnam, seeing choppers explode, in midair seeing his buddies explode, down so low he smells skin cooking, hears the cries, sees whole villages going up in flames, and the next day he’s back in the Berkshires. And now he really doesn’t belong, and, besides, he’s got fears now about things going over his head. He doesn’t want to be around other people, he can’t laugh or joke, he feels that he is no longer a part of their world, that he has seen and done things so outside what these people know about that he cannot connect to them and they cannot connect to him. They told him he could go home? How could he go home?

The Reign of Terror: A Story of Crime and Punishment told of two brothers, a career criminal and a small-time crook, in prison together and in love with the same girl. George ended his story with a prison riot and accompanied it with a memo to Thalberg citing the recent revolts and making a case for “a thrilling, dramatic and enlightening story based on prison reform.” --- Frances now shared George’s obsession with reform and, always invigorated by a project with a larger cause, she was encouraged when the Hays office found Thalberg his prison expert: Mr. P. W. Garrett, the general secretary of the National Society of Penal Information. Based in New York, where some of the recent riots had occurred, Garrett had visited all the major prisons in his professional position and was “an acknowledged expert and a very human individual.” He agreed to come to California to work with Frances for several weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas for a total of kr 4,470.62 plus expenses. Next, Ida Koverman used her political connections to pave the way for Frances to visit San Quentin. Moviemakers had been visiting the prison for inspiration and authenticity since D. W. Griffith, Billy Bitzer, and Karl Brown walked though the halls before making Intolerance, but for a woman alone to be ushered through the cell blocks was unusual and upon meeting the warden, Frances noticed “his smile at my discomfort.” Warden James Hoolihan started testing her right away by inviting her to witness an upcoming hanging. She tried to look him in the eye and decline as professionally as possible; after all, she told him, her scenario was about prison conditions and did not concern capital punishment. Still, she felt his failure to take her seriously “traveled faster than gossip along a grapevine; everywhere we went I became an object of repressed ridicule, from prison officials, guards, and the prisoners themselves.” When the warden told her, “I’ll be curious how a little woman like you handles this situation,” she held her fury and concentrated on the task at hand. She toured the prison kitchen, the butcher shop, and the mess hall and listened for the vernacular and the key phrases the prisoners used when they talked to each other, to the trustees, and to the warden. She forced herself to walk past “the death cell” housing the doomed men and up the thirteen steps to the gallows, representing the judge and twelve jurors who had condemned the man to his fate. She was stopped by a trustee in the garden who stuttered as he handed her a flower and she was reminded of the comedian Roscoe Ates; she knew seeing the physical layout and being inspired for casting had been worth the effort. --- Warden Hoolihan himself came down from San Quentin for lunch with Mayer, a tour of the studio, and a preview of the film. Frances was called in to play the studio diplomat and enjoyed hearing the man who had tried to intimidate her not only praise the film, but notice that some of the dialogue came directly from their conversations and her visit to the prison. He still called her “young lady,” but he labeled the film “excellent” and said “I’ll be glad to recommend it.” ---- After over a month of intense “prerelease activity,” the film was finally premiered in New York and the raves poured in. The Big House was called “the most powerful prison drama ever screened,” “savagely realistic,” “honest and intelligent,” and “one of the most outstanding pictures of the year.

The following example is adapted from a conversation a friend of mine had with his wife. She came to him frustrated with her sister and looking for support. Amy: “Ugh. Emily is driving me crazy!” David: “What happened?” Amy: “You know this sisters’ trip we’ve been planning? She keeps changing the plans and doesn’t seem to listen to—or care at all about—what the rest of us want to do.” David: “Well, have you just told her what you want to do?” Amy: “Of course I have. We all have! She always seems to have some reason for doing things her way. Ugh. I’m so sick of this.” David: “You should just tell her that—that you don’t feel like she’s listening.” Amy: “I’ve tried that. She always does this. I feel like I’m crazy because everyone else just backs down and lets her take over. I’m not about to spend all this money and take a week off work only to have to follow her strict schedule all day!” David: “Well, if you don’t want to go, don’t go.” Amy: “Of course I want to go! I just want to go and actually have fun!” David: “Then just talk to your other sisters. I’m sure you guys can figure it out. Or I’ll talk to her!” Amy: “No, I can take care of it. I’m just frustrated.” David: “What if you each planned one day?” Amy: “It’s not that easy. The sites we want to see are too far apart from each other.” David: “What if you just booked a tour group instead?” Amy: “No, we want to do it ourselves.” David (not quite sure what Amy is expecting from him at this point): “Well, you’d better figure it out soon. Isn’t the trip in a few weeks?” Amy (now frustrated and ready to end the conversation): “Yeah. It’s okay. I’ll figure it out.” Why did David’s multiple attempts to help his wife go so poorly? In short, he didn’t recognize that she was looking for validation rather than advice. Amy remained frustrated because David tried to fix the problem right out of the gates instead of first validating her frustration. David also walked away feeling confused and unappreciated because Amy became more upset—and even a little defensive—as he tried to help.

One thing more makes these men and women from the age of wigs, swords, and stagecoaches seem surprisingly contemporary. This small group of people not only helped to end one of the worst of human injustices in the most powerful empire of its time; they also forged virtually every important tool used by citizens’ movements in democratic countries today. Think of what you’re likely to find in your mailbox—or electronic mailbox—over a month or two. An invitation to join the local chapter of a national environmental group. If you say yes, a logo to put on your car bumper. A flier asking you to boycott California grapes or Guatemalan coffee. A poster to put in your window promoting this campaign. A notice that a prominent social activist will be reading from her new book at your local bookstore. A plea that you write your representative in Congress or Parliament, to vote for that Guatemalan coffee boycott bill. A “report card” on how your legislators have voted on these and similar issues. A newsletter from the group organizing support for the grape pickers or the coffee workers. Each of these tools, from the poster to the political book tour, from the consumer boycott to investigative reporting designed to stir people to action, is part of what we take for granted in a democracy. Two and a half centuries ago, few people assumed this. When we wield any of these tools today, we are using techniques devised or perfected by the campaign that held its first meeting at 2 George Yard in 1787. From their successful crusade we still have much to learn. If, early that year, you had stood on a London street corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped, nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot. The tenth might have agreed with you in principle, but assured you that ending slavery was wildly impractical: the British Empire’s economy would collapse. The parliamentarian Edmund Burke, for example, opposed slavery but thought that the prospect of ending even just the Atlantic slave trade was “chimerical.” Within a few short years, however, the issue of slavery had moved to center stage in British political life. There was an abolition committee in every major city or town in touch with a central committee in London. More than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat slave-grown sugar. Parliament was flooded with far more signatures on abolition petitions than it had ever received on any other subject. And in 1792, the House of Commons passed the first law banning the slave trade. For reasons we will see, a ban did not take effect for some years to come, and British slaves were not finally freed until long after that. But there was no mistaking something crucial: in an astonishingly short period of time, public opinion in Europe’s most powerful nation had undergone a sea change. From this unexpected transformation there would be no going back.

No president ever had been left a more dismal legacy by his predecessor. Untamed fire had scorched the earth at home and abroad. Obama inherited a howling recession that wiped out millions of Americans’ jobs and savings; two wars, with 161,000 American troops in Iraq and 38,000 more in Afghanistan, some on their third and fourth tours of duty, their commanders with no clear goal in sight nor any glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel; and an American political warfare machine that now resembled a rusting 1948 Cadillac resting on cinder blocks. Bush had run it off the road.

during which he probably gave them chapter and verse concerning his forthcoming tour.

I started writing songs when I was twelve and since then, it’s been the compass guiding my life, and in turn, my life guided my writing. Everything I do is just an extension of my writing, whether it’s directing videos or a short film, creating the visuals for a tour, or standing on stage performing. Everything is connected by my love of the craft, the thrill of working through ideas and narrowing them down and polishing it all up in the end.

This treatise on the church would seem to make the "true church" an article of faith that could be neither proved nor disproved, safe from refutation, in a realm beyond the range of reason's dreadful artillery. It represents a tour de force not only against the Catholic Church but also against the notion that history, tradition, or custom could be proof of the validity of any institution. In this direction lay perhaps Luther's most truly revolutionary impulse. The medieval mentality had been to say that anything long sanctioned by tradition was valid because tradition or custom represented the working out of the will of an almighty and invisible God. The Middle Ages much more than the age of Enlightenment might sing in almost unanimous chorus, "Whatever is, is right." This willingness to dismiss the authority of custom in favor of a scriptural text that might radically contradict custom-or tradition-could lead to the notion that all the institutions of society might be made over anew. These might include positive law-law as announced in statutes and royal decrees. They might include even the political order itself. Yet this thundering treatise against Catharinus with its hidden church known only to God ran against a stronger impulse of Luther's that was soon to assert itself once it became clear that he would have no reconciliation with the Catholic Church. He was by temperament conservative in his political views, and like other educated people of his time he feared the common people. Moreover, despite the apocalyptic fervor of this tractate, Luther was far from being one of those souls who look skyward every day expecting to hear the last trumpet and to see the heavens split with the return of Christ in judgment. The end times had begun; but he did not make predictions about how long they would last, nor did he claim that Christians might help things along by revolting against Catholic princes.

When visitors toured through IPS, Lemmon encouraged the chimps to perform. The most common trick among them was a cigarette gag. The chimps all liked to smoke, but a few put the lit end of the cigarette into their mouths as if they were making a dumb mistake, and then proceeded to take a long deep drag. First-time visitors always gasped, a response that all the chimps found highly amusing.

My dear," he admonished her when she brought up the fact that she might, in the future, go back to work as a lawyer, "how do you expect to do two jobs?"... "You already have a job," he explained. "From now on, your life with your husband is your job." He corrected himself. "It's more than a job. It's a career. Your husband makes the money, and you create the life. And it's going to take effort. You'll rise each morning and exercise, not simply to look attractive but to build endurance. Most ladies prefer yoga. Then you will dress. You'll arrange your schedule and send e-mails. You'll attend a meeting for a charity in the morning, or perhaps visit an art dealer or make a studio visit. You'll have lunch, and then there are meetings with decorators, caterers, and stylists; you'll have your hair colored twice a month and blow-dried three times a week. You'll do private tours of museums and read, I hope, three newspapers a day: The New York Times, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal. At the end of the day, you'll prepare for an evening out, which may include two or three cocktail parties and a dinner. Some will be black-tie charity events where you'll be expected to wear a gown and never the same dress twice. You'll need to have your hair and makeup done. You'll also plan vacations and weekend outings. You may purchase a country house, which you will also have to organize, staff, and decorate. You will meet the right people and court them in a manner both subtle and shameless. And then, my dear, there will be children. So," Billy concluded, "let's get busy.

You and patterns Patterns, shapes and visions, all assume one form, That of her smiles, her deep eyes and her beauty warm, Moments, all moments passing by, and the very ability to experience time, Without her seems to be a profane act of mind, that becomes its inadvertent crime, Days, months, years and decades, chase a century still unrealised, But in all these variants of time, in every moment you reside disguised, As a feeling that leaps from every moment of time and imprisons me, So I lie stranded in a moment, and I cannot do anything, though I know it is not where it is meant to be, Hopes arise from somewhere in my mind, and become feelings felt a long time ago, And my heart follows the mind into emotional territories, where it should not go, And then all patterns, all shapes, and every vision assumes one shape, That of you, your beauty, and then this visual mirage covers me like a drape, Like a never ending veil of mist flowing over the surface of water, Concealing everything that lies between them, and the gently flowing waves in romantic splashes utter, Feelings they feel, and it is then feelings speak in a language that one can hear, And like these waves, my love Irma, my heart beats too; similar echoes of my passions bear, Then shapes fade away, patterns disappear, and only the vision remains, Now my heart does not control my mind, and my mind no longer my heart restrains, So I live inside a vision and you live all around me, And the mind doesn't care what the heart feels, because my heart has grown into a tree, That branches out everywhere, it has transformed into the tree of everything, But it still remains the tree that only bears one fruit and thrives on one thing, That of your memories and your visions, in all colours, It is then, my wandering heart ends its wayward tours, And I grow as a feeling over this vision of yours, Because now the vision is completely and exclusively ours!

If you happen to be riding a stage of the Tour de France while you eat the doughnut, or are engaged in other intense exercise, those calories will be consumed almost instantly in the muscles. But in a typical sedentary person, who is not depleting muscle glycogen rapidly, the excess energy from the doughnut will largely end up in fat cells (or more specifically, as triglycerides contained within fat cells).

A 2010 Los Angeles Opera production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle cost $31 million to produce.24 Broadway shows don’t usually cost that much, unless you’re talking about the recent Spider-Man debacle. U2’s last concert-tour budget might be in that range, but those were stadium shows attracting huge numbers of people. And in those latter two instances, the people who wrote the music are still alive, and presumably they get paid a piece out of every ticket sold, which is part of what keeps those production costs up. Wagner has been dead for a long time, so one assumes it’s not his agent who is charging the moon and driving up the cost of these Ring productions. (Granted, it is a four-part epic.) The Los Angeles Opera ended up with a $6 million deficit due to “slack demand for expensive tickets.

在澳办毕业证咨询【Q微2026614433】办（UTS高仿毕业证UTS毕业证成绩单认证书）购买悉尼科技大学毕业证2021最新版本文凭。 Ruby Falls will sweep you headfirst into the life of Eleanor Russell, an actress setting up house in the glamorous Hollywood Hills with her handsome new husband, Orlando. Secrets abound in this bang of a book, a haunting tale sure to give readers chills. A stunner with some serious Gothic vibes." --Kimberly Belle, internationally bestselling author of "Dear Wife" and "Stranger in the Lake" "A tribute to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, this unnerving story about a Hollywood starlet haunted by her past will captivate you right up until the shocking ending. A must-read for anyone who loves an expertly plotted thriller with multidimensional characters." --Emily Liebert, USA Today bestselling author of "Perfectly Famous" "In 1968, young Ruby Russell loses her father while touring an underground cave. She recalls the moment his hand left hers, and nearly twenty years later, his disappearance remains a mystery. Ruby has reinvented herself as Eleanor Russell, married the man of her dreams, and is acting in a feature film. But as her new life begins to go awry, the mystery surrounding her past and present collide in a well-crafted and head spinning twist that I did not see coming. Ruby Falls is a skillfully plotted page turner!" --Wendy Walker, national bestselling author of "Don't Look for Me" "What a lovely ride! With fun twists and whip-smart language, clever Deborah Goodrich Royce leads readers down a familiar path--until she doesn't. Lyrical and filled with page-turning suspense, I gulped every word and enjoyed every bite. I promise Ruby Falls will become your next favorite book!" --Maureen Joyce Connolly, author of "Little Lovely Things" "Ruby Falls is a fantastic combination of a sweeping Hollywood story folde

The next day, Trump toured Fauci’s lab, the NIH Vaccine Research Center, as part of the White House effort to showcase the president’s determination to speed up the creation of a vaccine. Fauci again reminded Trump that getting a vaccine in a year was wildly optimistic. At the end of the tour, Fauci and Azar drove with the president across Wisconsin Avenue from the NIH campus to the helipad at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where Marine One awaited to fly Trump back to the White House. “So how’s Francis Collins doing?” the president asked Azar, referring to the NIH director they had just said goodbye to. “He’s really helped us on the fetal tissue ban,” Azar said. He referred to Trump’s 2019 decision to dramatically cut government funding at NIH and elsewhere for medical research that relied on tissues of aborted fetuses. This was a move to please antiabortion conservatives, a key part of the president’s political base. Collins didn’t agree with the policy, Azar told Trump, but was “being very professional in implementing it.” Azar was surprised when Trump asked, “Is that fetal tissue issue going to slow down the vaccine and therapies?” When he learned the answer was yes, the president said he wanted them to reverse the ban, but that never happened.

He sounded amused. “You don’t have to do that, Emmy. Seriously.” When I uncovered my eyes, he stated a matter-of-factly, “By the end of this week, you’ll have seen all of us naked.” Really? My hand fell. “I will?” Lee grinned. “On tour means zero privacy. Besides—” He walked away, sliding his boxers down his legs and stepping out of them. “—I don’t mind.” Day one. I have seen taut male buns. And they were nice. I wonder what else I’ll see.

The conflict will not end until followers of the alt-right and the anticapitalist left are given a living wage and a voice in how we are governed. Take away a person’s dignity, agency, and self-esteem and this is what you get. As political power devolves into a more naked form of corporate totalitarianism, as unemployment and underemployment expand, so will extremist groups. They will attract more sympathy and support as the wider population realizes, correctly, that Americans have been stripped of all ability to influence the decisions that affect their lives—lives that are getting steadily worse.

It is a week since I arrived in Mecco, and for the first time I have leisure to write up my journal. The life of a Foreign Observer is very strenuous, for the Meccanian method of seeing everything according to programme and timetable is very fatiguing. Already I feel that a holiday will be welcome at the end of my tour. In the whole of this vast city of Mecco there is nothing casual, nothing incidental, nothing unprovided for. Although I am only a spectator, I feel like a little cog in the huge complicated machine. The machine seems to absorb everything; the individual counts for nothing. That is perhaps the reason why it seems impossible to get into contact with any human being other than the officials who instruct me and conduct me every moment of my time. I begin to wonder whether the individual Meccanian really exists, or whether his personality is merged in the official personality which is all that is visible to me.

When we put our foot down, I think they got a little bit nervous,” Solo says. “They said, Okay, what will it take to get you guys at all the NWSL games this weekend?” In the end, the federation treated it as an appearance fee of sorts. The players would get $10,000 each to attend their NWSL games, and they would be flown first-class, a distinct upgrade from their usual travel. It was a relatively small victory, but it set the stage for the players to stand up for themselves more assertively. The women of the national team proved they were the best in the world, they captured the country’s attention, and now they had leverage. “It was really the first time where we were like, Okay, we are worth something to the federation and we know it, so now we have to keep this going,” Solo says. “That’s what really empowered us. All of a sudden, we got a $10,000 fee, first-class tickets to fly to our NWSL games, and it was right before we were going to negotiate our new contract.” But things didn’t get better just because the federation paid the players a $10,000 fee. In less than a month, the players had to set out on the road again for a 10-game victory tour as World Cup champions and, as it turned out, the venues weren’t exactly befitting of a World Cup–winning national team. Eight of the 10 victory-tour games in 2015 were scheduled on artificial turf. Over the course of that year, U.S. Soccer scheduled the women to play 57 percent of their home games on artificial turf but scheduled zero of the men’s games on artificial turf. In fact, the men played at five venues that had artificial-turf surfaces, and in all five cases, the federation paid to have temporary grass installed.

The rule for the mentoring meeting was that we could talk only about long-term issues, and primarily people issues. All business concerning a leaking valve or failed circuit card had to occur outside these meetings. During the first set of discussions, we adapted a useful technique for long-term focus and planning. I asked each of them to write their end-of-tour awards. Since these supervisors are assigned to the submarine for three years, this particular exercise made them look that far into the future.

Directed dabbling is what led me to Bre Pettis, a former art teacher from Seattle who started NYC Resistor, a Brooklyn maker space, and also launched the 3-D printing company MakerBot next door. I had been tracking Bre as part of our digital development effort. I e-mailed Bre to ask if I could simply hang out and watch what he was doing: “I want to understand the new wave of micro-manufacturing, and especially what you are doing with 3-D printing.” Resistor was a higgledy-piggledy series of rooms on the fourth floor of a run-down factory. There Bre introduced me to his “makers” as we walked between workbenches covered with bits of sheet metal and wires and boxes of odds and ends. I saw people making a miniature wind turbine and a portable water purification system. That is, GE kinds of things. One guy was building his own miniature gas turbine, because, well, he could. “Why not?” he said. “People want to live off the grid.” “We could use this ingenuity inside GE,” I said out loud. After NYC Resistor and MakerBot, I met with Shapeways, in Queens, an advanced contract manufacturer where people submitted designs to be 3-D printed for a fee. As we toured the space and talked about the jewelry they made, I

Chastain had watched teammates like Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy end their careers with testimonial matches—the special farewell games that important players earn—but she was never going to get one. Her last game was the final stop of the post-Olympics victory tour in 2004, the same last game as Hamm and Foudy, only Chastain didn’t know it at the time. “It wasn’t on my radar—it wasn’t supposed to happen like that,” Chastain says. “He was the assistant coach. I’m not sure how he became coach of the national team, to be honest, and there was no discussion.” Shannon MacMillan, another veteran, tells a similar story. She, too, was surprised to find herself left off rosters, but in her case, it was because Greg Ryan had reassured her that she was in his plans. As time went on and she still hadn’t gotten a call, at age 31 she gave up hope of ever returning to the team. Her career ended at 176 caps. “I was like, Enough’s enough,” she says. “That’s kind of what forced my hand into retiring. I just got sick and tired of the politics and the B.S.