Tour Start Quotes

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

The band has decided to give him and his wife a much needed break from the road to start a life and have a proper honeymoon and do all the things a newlywed couple should do. I'm very proud to announce my brother's recent marriage. Watching him grow up into a man and finding love makes me the happiest brother alive. I know this is upsetting news, as it is for us, but we will continues to tour with a temporary replacement until he has situated himself in his new life.

Falco's eyes widened in fake shock. "Well, then perhaps I should ask for a tour of the house." He grinned, clearly relishing Cass's embarrassment. "Can we start with your bedroom?

Found one of my old journals. from right around the time we were heading out on tour with NFG in the UK early 2008. i started reading it and couldn't help but cry a little bit. cause that person was really confused. and very lost. and as it went on, the person behind the pen seemed to get a little bit stronger.. that part felt good. it was the reminder that i needed that right now i'm as strong as ever. there really isn't a point to telling you all of this. except maybe i want to thank you. cause you are a constant reminder. that i'm not as lost as i once was.

We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. "No one sees the barn," he said finally. A long silence followed. "Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn." He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others. We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies." There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides. "Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism." Another silence ensued. "They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.

The strangest thing has happened. I really missed my dog. That's never happened to me before. You know, on a long tour you do hear people saying they miss their pets. I never have. But last night I started really missing my dog. It's very odd, 'cause I don't have a dog.

I’m surprised Thorne hasn’t asked if he can start leading guided tours down here. I bet you could charge a hefty admission fee.” Cinder snorted. “Please don’t plant that idea in his head.

The common denominator of all jokes is a path of expectation that is diverted by an unexpected twist necessitating a complete reinterpretation of all the previous facts — the punch-line…Reinterpretation alone is insufficient. The new model must be inconsequential. For example, a portly gentleman walking toward his car slips on a banana peel and falls. If he breaks his head and blood spills out, obviously you are not going to laugh. You are going to rush to the telephone and call an ambulance. But if he simply wipes off the goo from his face, looks around him, and then gets up, you start laughing. The reason is, I suggest, because now you know it’s inconsequential, no real harm has been done. I would argue that laughter is nature’s way of signaling that "it’s a false alarm." Why is this useful from an evolutionary standpoint? I suggest that the rhythmic staccato sound of laughter evolved to inform our kin who share our genes; don’t waste your precious resources on this situation; it’s a false alarm. Laughter is nature’s OK signal.

We all have one life and we can choose how we want to live it. It's important you realize that, no matter what anyone else says or how people may try to influence things, it's ultimately down to you... only YOU can live for you. You can't live in someone else's shadow or permanently try to please someone else, then what do you have to show for it? You won't have any of your own accomplishments, you won't reach your personal goals, and you'll only be ticking someone else's boxes for them. If there is something in life that you really want to do, then do it. You'll only ever live this day once in your lifetime, so start now.

People in the West like to shoot things. When they first got to the West they shot buffalo. Once there were 70 million buffalo on the plains and then the people of the West started blasting away at them. Buffalo are just cows with big heads. If you've ever looked a cow in the face and seen the unutterable depths of trust and stupidity that lie within, you will be able to guess how difficult it must have been for people in the West to track down buffalo and shoot them to pieces. By 1895, there were only 800 buffalo left, mostly in zoos and touring Wild West shows. With no buffalo left to kill, Westerners started shooting Indians. Between 1850 and 1890 they reduced the number of Indians in America from two million to 90,000. Nowadays, thank goodness, both have made a recovery. Today there are 30,000 buffalo and 300,000 Indiands, and of course you are not allowed to shoot either, so all the Westerners have left to shoot at are road signs and each other, both of which they do rather a lot. There you have a capsule history of the West.

I am very much out of my element here. There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am going to lose my mind. Earlier today, I heard someone say the words, "I felt at one with the divine source of creation." Mary Roach on a conducted tour of Hades. I had to fight the urge to push back my chair and start screaming: STAND BACK! ALL OF YOU! I'VE GOT AN ARTHUR FINDLAY BOX CUTTER! Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to.

He’d never believed one person was tailor-made specifically for him until now. He was starting to think like Brian von Romantic de Retard. Pretty lame. Yet so totally not. Now that he knew what it felt like, it wasn’t lame at all.

Amy turned to Nellie. "Can you create a diversion to draw the clerk outside?" The au pair was wary. "What kind of diversion?" "You could pretend to be lost," Dan proposed. "The guy comes out to give you directions, and we slip inside." "That's the most sexist idea I've ever heard," Nellie said harshly. "I'm female, so I have to be clueless. He's male, so he's got a great sense of direction." "Maybe you're from out of town," Dan suggested. "Wait–you are from out of town." Nellie stashed their bags under a bench and set Saladin on the seat with a stern "You're the watchcat. Anybody touches those bags, unleash your inner tiger." The Egyptian Mau surveyed the street uncertainly. "Mrrp." Nellie sighed. "Lucky for us there's no one around. Okay, I'm going in there. Be ready." The clerk said something to her–probably May I help you? She smiled apologetically. "I don't speak Italian." "Ah–you are American." His accent was heavy, but he seemed eager to please. "I will assist you." He took in her black nail polish and nose ring. "Punk, perhaps, is your enjoyment?" "More like a punk/reggae fusion," Nellie replied thoughtfully. "With a country feel. And operatic vocals." The clerk stared in perplexity. Nellie began to tour the aisles, pulling out CDs left and right. "Ah–Artic Monkeys–that's what I'm talking about. And some Bad Brains–from the eighties. Foo Fighters–I'll need a couple from those guys. And don't forget Linkin Park..." He watched in awe as she stacked up an enormous armload of music. "There," she finished, slapping Frank Zappa's Greatest Hits on top of the pile. "That should do for a start." "You are a music lover," said the wide-eyed cashier. "No, I'm a kleptomaniac." And she dashed out the door.

A whirlwind tour, I think, with each day starting in a different city, you wearing a different silk dress, tasting food the likes of which you cannot even imagine and learning how to weave your word-spells in all the world's languages.

My life was awful. When I was a kid, I was fat, pretty ugly and had awful hair. I used to get teased every fucking day, slammed up against lockers, punched in the face - you name it. Hell, I had to go to prom with one of my female friends because I couldn’t even get a proper date. I can’t even look back at those photos because I look so bad. I transferred schools, but the teasing just got worse. After an, let’s say, ‘incident’ I had with the school play the bullying just got worse. But I made it through high school, only to find out that real life was pretty much the same. I just stayed in my dark room all day and didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t go outside. I just stayed inside and drew. I’d draw vampires, mummies, heroes, villains. Anything to help me escape all the bad in the world. I went to art school and didn’t really belong. All I could draw was comic book characters. I tried to put my only good talent to use by drawing a cartoon and pitching it - only to have it turned down. Life to me was just pointless. I started drinking, doing drugs and just generally wasting my life drawing.
Then one day, I saw bodies falling from the sky. I witnessed people dying. And that’s when I decided to turn my life around. I called up anyone I knew who had an instrument and we formed a band. Being on tour for the first few years was bad. All we’d do is get drunk and do drugs, but I loved it. Because I was doing something I loved with people I loved. And a few years ago I met the most perfect woman ever. It’s like we share a wave-link or something. She just knows me without even knowing me, if you understand. And now, 2011, I have a beautiful baby girl, a caring wife and I get to perform for my adoring fans everyday. I am living proof that no matter how bad it gets, it gets better. I am Gerard Way, and I survived.

He would start it, I think, at the gate of Millbank, the point that every visitor must pass when they arrive to make their tour of the gaols.

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’.

What the newbies aren't told on their tour of the school grounds is that Gilly's sword is charged with enough electricity to... well... light your hair on fire. I just love the start of school.

Mia, stop!" My voice bounces off her bedroom walls. "We are not in high school anymore!" She looks at me, a question hanging in the air. "Look, my tour doesn't start for another week." A feather of hope starts to float across the space between us. "And you know, I was thinking I was craving some sushi." Her smile is sad and rueful, not exactly what I was going for. "You'd come to Japan with me?" "I'm already there.

The scheme had been, if I remember, that after lunch I should go off and caddy for Honoria on a shopping tour down Regent Street; but when she got up and started collecting me and the rest of her things, Aunt Agatha stopped her.

Lacing their fingers together, Kai lifted the back of her hand to his mouth. "Was there any reason in particular you wanted to show me this?" "I'm not sure. I figured you know all about my biological family and the world I was born into, and you've of course had the great pleasure of meeting my adoptive family on numerous occasions, so this was the last piece of the puzzle." She waved her free arm around the room. "The missing link to my past." Kai looked around one more time. "It's pretty creepy, actually." "I know." After another moment of reverent silence, Kai said, "I'm surprised Thorne hasn't asked if he can start leading guided tours down here. I bet you could charge a hefty admission fee." Cinder snorted. "Please don't plant that idea in his head." "Scarlet would never allow it anyway.

If you’ll all just follow me over to our top sector here, I’ll start your guided tour.” Ellis got up, then followed Riley and Heather, who was dragging her feet, as they fell in behind Deb. “Are there going to be snacks?” he asked. “I do my best work with snacks.

Hoy shit!” Van yells. “Tom Carter! On tour with us! Man, it’s gonna be wild! Chicks, parties…chicks! It’s gonna be so fucking wild! The man is a fucking legend!” Sonny looks shell-shocked. Then, he springs to life. “Damn straight, he’s a legend! He’s a pussy legend! We are touring with the best there is! Just think of the stuff he can teach us.” He gets this dreamy look in his eyes. Honestly, he’s starting to freak me out.

rush of warmth fills my body as I remember why I love K-pop so much. How special it is to be able to share my language and my culture with people all over the world and have them truly see it. Understand it. Love it. I feel my smile stretch on my face and my heart feels light and free for the first time since this tour started.

We lose too many people that way, both male and female. Twenty-two combat veterans die every day in the United States alone from suicide, and it isn’t just soldiers who have just come home from their tours of duty. There is no statute of limitations on nightmares and depression. With numbers like that, we need to start talking to one another more.

That city tour sounds fun!” Dad said. You almost have to feel sorry for him with his taped-over lens and desperate attitude, until you remember this whole thing started because he tried to get Mom locked up in a mental hospital. “Yeah,” I said. “Do you want to go on it?” “I do,” he said, all hopeful and touched. “Have fun.” I grabbed my backpack and headed to the pool.

My mind starts buzzing. No seafood. For weeks. From District 4. The barely concealed rage in the crowd during the Victory Tour. And suddenly I am absolutely sure that District 4 has revolted.

Here’s the point. If I had waited until the songs were finished, this thing might never have happened. If I had merely tinkered with these songs for all the years it took to finally record them, chances are I would have moved on to other things and never given it a try. It wouldn’t have grown into what it was meant to be. You can think and plan and think some more, but none of that is half as important as doing something, however imperfect or incomplete it is. Intention trumps execution, remember? Sometimes you book the tour before the songs are written. Sometimes you stand at the altar and say “I do” without any clue how you and your wife are going to make it. Sometimes you move to Nashville with no money in the bank and no real prospects. Sometimes you start with nothing and hope it all works out. Not sometimes—every time. All you really have is your willingness to fail, coupled with the mountain of evidence that the Maker has never left nor forsaken you.

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?

I remember that I did feel, starting my mini-tour, the resident anxiety you develop when you know you've been too lucky; at any moment, maybe next Tuesday afternoon, I would be stricken with something unbearable.

Good afternoon, Friedrich. Do you ever work? I’m starting to suspect you don’t,” Cinderella said. Friedrich nonchalantly adjusted his eye patch. “I thought we agreed you were finished with historical tours.” “Yes,

For her first summer vacation, my sister went to California with a couple of friends on a package tour put together by her agency. One of the members of the tour group was a computer engineer a year her senior, and she started dating him when they came back to Japan. This kind of thing happens all the time, but it's not for me. First of all, I hate package tours, and the thought of getting serious about somebody you meet in a group like that makes me sick.

Don’t get me started on the government and its failings with regard to our soldiers. It’s criminal. The military tends to equate PTSD with weakness or cowardice. But they’re going to have to get on board, especially because troops are doing multiple tours. We need to make the VA and the government start addressing the needs of its soldiers at home. We need to shine a light on this and erase the stigma. This case is important, Michael. Maybe you can help another broken soldier and save some lives.

It feels significant, finding myself suddenly writing the song I was working on when we were last here. Like musical memory reminding me not to lose faith. I wonder if we could be like the lyrics I started on the drive home a decade ago. Not lost. Unfinished.

During a recent visit to the United States, French President François Mitterrand stopped to tour California’s Silicon Valley, where he hoped to learn more about the ingenuity and entrepreneurial drive that gave birth to so many companies there. Over lunch, Mitterrand listened as Thomas Perkins, a partner in the venture capital fund that started Genentech Inc., extolled the virtues of the risk-taking investors who finance the entrepreneurs. Perkins was cut off by Stanford University Professor Paul Berg, who won a Nobel Prize for work in genetic engineering. He asked, ‘Where were you guys in the ’50s and ’60s when all the funding had to be done in the basic science? Most of the discoveries that have fuelled [the industry] were created back then.’ Henderson and Schrage, in the Washington Post (1984)

When someone asks, "What do you do?” don't start with your occupation or family status. Instead, tell them about the "real you" with a spin. You might say, "Back home I'm run a coffee shop, but on this trip, I'm getting in touch with the part of me who wished she'd studied archeology.

I've hardly taken any pictures on this trip. Melanie teased me about it, to which I always said I preferred to experience something rather than obsessively record it. Though, really, the truth of it was, unlike Melanie (who wanted to remember the shoe salesman and the mime and the cute waiter and all the other people on the tour), none of that really mattered to me. At the start of the trip, I took shots of the sights. The Colosseum. Belvedere Palace. Mozart Square. But I stopped. They never came out very well, and you could get postcards of these things. But there are no postcards of this. Of life.

Hey,Gary," Savannah said, "do you want to go on a vampire hunt?" Greogri swung around to pin her with his brilliant silver gaze. Do not even start. He used the beauty of his voice like the weapon it was, compelling and mesmerizing. Savannah blinked, then smiled sweetly up at him. "Really,Gary. I saw it one of those tour brochures. Isn't that the perfect place to look for those society types? They must hang out around those kinds of things?" "A vampire hunt?" gary echoed incredulously. "For real?" "I have the brochure at home." She studiously avoided Gregori's furious gaze. She wore the little secret smile again, the one that always drove Gregori crazy, turned him inside out, and melted his heart. She was up to no good. He had no doubt of it. It has occurred to me that you need a good spanking. Her smile grew smug. I said I was willing to try anything once, lifemate, but i think it best if we wait until we are alone,don't you?

During the first weekend Prince Charles showed Diana around Highgrove, the 353-acre Gloucestershire home he had bought in July--the same month he had started to woo her. As he took her on a guided tour of the eight-bedroomed mansion, the Prince asked her to organize the interior decoration. He liked her taste while she felt that it was a “most improper” suggestion as they were not even engaged.

When he was barely 14, he auditioned on one of the most prestigious reality shows in South Korea, known as Superstar K. A show designed to find raw talent in the Korean music industry. The show achieved just that with the discovery of Jungkook. Interestingly, Jungkook did not win the show; neither was he part of the individuals who were selected. But his difference was evident to most of the individuals in the room, and before the show was over, he had received more than seven offers from seven different entertainment companies. The decision he made appeared to be the best decision he made all his life. He chose Big Hit Entertainment and started a 36-month training program with them.  Years later, he was quoted to have said that his present bandmate, Rap Monster, in the label was what influenced his decision.

The French magazine Parents says that if a baby is scared of strangers, his mother should warn him that a visitor will be coming over soon. Then, when the doorbell rings, ‘Tell him that the guest is here. Take a few seconds before opening the door . . . if he doesn’t cry when he sees the stranger, don’t forget to congratulate him.’ I hear of several cases where, upon bringing a baby home from the maternity hospital, the parents give the baby a tour of the house.9 French parents often tell babies what they’re doing to them: I’m picking you up, I’m changing your nappy, I’m going to give you a bath. This isn’t just to make soothing sounds; it’s to convey information. And since the baby is a person like any other, parents are often quite polite about all this. (Plus it’s apparently never too early to start instilling good manners.)

Dear Fisher, I guess this is it, huh? After almost fourteen years together, starting a life of our own on this island, five tours of duty and countless letters I’ve written you through it all, I finally go out to the mailbox and see something I’ve always dreamed of: an envelope with your handwriting on it. For one moment, I actually thought you’d changed your mind. That all the awful things you said to me were just your way of coping after everything you’d been through. I was still here, Fisher. I was still here, holding my breath, waiting for you to come back even though you told me you never would. You always said you’d find your way back to me. Out of all the lies you’ve told me, this one hurts the most. Enclosed you will find the signed divorce papers, as requested. I hope you find what you’re looking for. I’m sorry it wasn’t me. Lucy

death, how I imagined it, I said that the pictures would stop. Evidently I saw as pictures what Americans refer to as Experience. I wasn’t at the moment thinking of the pictures newly available, recently offered by technology—the kind of tour one now might take of one’s digestive tract, or of the heart. The heart—only a group of muscles after all. But how tenacious they are, starting to beat in the womb, and going in rhythm for as long as a century.

Back inside, I’m shown an antique cabinet in which members of the community, famous for their homegrown produce, dried herbs. The Oneida Community was an upstate tourist attraction right from the start, second, Valesky says, to Niagara Falls. I’m taking the same guided tour offered a hundred and fifty years ago to prim rubbernecks who came here to peep at sex fiends. I wonder how many of my vacationing forebears went home disappointed? They thought they were taking the train to Gomorrah but instead they got to watch herbs dry. Valesky opens a drawer in the herb cabinet so I can get a whiff. He mentions that back in the day, when one tourist was shown the cabinet she rudely asked her community-member guide, “What’s that odor?” To which the guide replied, “Perhaps it’s the odor of crushed selfishness.” Valesky grins. “How about that for a utopian answer?” To my not particularly utopian nose, crushed selfishness smells a lot like cilantro.

On stage James Brown seemed like a wild man, but everything had to be perfect, offstage and on. Shoes shined, suits pressed, hairdos duded up to the copacetic nth degree. He’d fine the band if they played a wrong note. He’d fine them if they forgot shirts, shoes unlaced, if they swore. And I feel the same way! When one of Brown’s bands started to complain he just got rid of them in the middle of a tour and had another one sent out from Cincinnati. It was like boot camp. He was tough on his guys.

McGee’s old touring car had once been green. It had also been painted black, but this had worn thin and you could see the original green coming through on the hood. The fenders were still black. The speedometer said 53,562 miles, but the motor was smooth. McGee drove as though he had a horse in front, saying ‘Giddap’ when he wanted to start and ‘Whoa’ when he was stopping. I was scared he would forget the horse wasn’t there sometime and try to stop by pulling back on the steering-wheel. He didn’t, though.

Just sit right back And you'll hear a tale A tale of a fateful trip, That started from this tropic port, Aboard this tiny ship. The mate was a mighty sailin' lad, The Skipper brave and sure, Five passengers set sail that day, For a three hour tour, A three hour tour. The weather started getting rough, The tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew The Minnow would be lost. The Minnow would be lost. The ship set ground on the shore Of this uncharted desert isle With Gilligan, The Skipper too. The millionaire And his wife, The movie star, The professor and Mary Ann, Here on Gilligan's Isle. So this is the tale of our castaways, They're here for a long long time. They'll have to make the best of things, It's an uphill climb. The first mate and his Skipper too Will do their very best, To make the others comf'terble In their tropic island nest. No phone, no lights, no motor car, Not a single luxury Like Robinson Crusoe It's primitive as can be. So join us here each week my friends, You're sure to get a smile, From seven stranded castaways Here on Gilligan's Isle!

I started carrying an old tour book for the Florida Keys in my bag with me at all times. I'd had it since I was a kid, and after my daddy died, I read it to escape back to memories of him taking me there. As I read it to my guys, we'd leave whatever hospital we were in, and go somewhere beautiful, away from trouble and worry. They'd all come home to Arkansas, a place that had birthed them but wouldn't claim them. So we left. . . . We went someplace else, where they were safe and warm. Where there was nothing to be hidden and nothing wrong with admiring the way the sun shone down on the beauty of men. As it it existed for that very reason -- to be admired and loved.

I had been trying to find some sort of exercise program that wasn’t overly bourgeois, but I was having a problem. Weight-lifting was too obviously fascist in nature. Horseback riding was too imperialistic. I gave a lot of thought to starting a co-ed softball league, but that turns out to be closely tied to beer consumption, and I didn’t need the carbohydrates. I had to do something to improve my health that didn’t compromise my revolutionary ethics. (I went so far as to ask my mother for advice on the subject, and she sent me a link to a Chinese tour company that specialized in re-enactments of the Long March, which sounded fascinating but would take me away from Washington at a pivotal time in history, so I didn’t sign up.)

Owen felt his mouth curve into a grin as he heard the familiar clap, clap, clap behind him. That was one of his favorite sounds—high heels on the wooden dock of the Boys of the Bayou swamp boat tour company. He took his time turning and once he did, he started at the shoes. They were black and showed off bright red toenails. The straps wrapped sexily around trim ankles and led the eye right up to smooth, toned calves. The heels matched the black polka dots on the white skirt that thankfully didn’t start until mid-thigh, and showed off more tanned skin. He straightened from his kneeling position in one of the boats as his eyes kept moving up past the skirt to the bright red belt that accentuated a narrow waist and then to the silky black tank that molded to a pair of perfect breasts. He was fully anticipating her lips being bright red to go with that belt and her toenail polish. God, he loved red lipstick. And high heels. In any color. But before he could get to those lips, she used them, to say, “Oh, dammit, it’s you.” Owen’s gaze bypassed her mouth to fly to her eyes. Because he’d know that voice anywhere. Madison Allain was home. A day early. Not that an extra day would have helped him prepare. He’d been thinking about her visit for a week and was still as wound tight about it as he’d been when Sawyer, his business partner and cousin, had told him that she was coming home. For a month. Owen stood just watching her, fighting back all of the first words that he was tempted to say. Like, “Damn, you’re even more gorgeous than the last time I saw you.” Or, “I haven’t put anyone in the hospital lately.” Or, “I’ve missed you so fucking much.” Just for instance.

participated in the grueling competition, which was broken up into stages and went on for days. But in the spring of 1940, Germany invaded France, and shortly after that, the German army marched into Paris. The Tours de France had been canceled indefinitely. Now it was 1942, and the Occupation had dragged on for two long years. Who knew how long it would last or when the race would start up again? The bumpy cobblestones made the bike shake. But Marcel wouldn’t let that stop him. He knew that in 1939, the spring classic Paris-Roubaix bicycle race included fifteen or more cobbled sections as part of the grueling 200-plus kilometer course. Some were even steep hills. He had just rounded the corner of the street where Madame Trottier lived when suddenly a streak of orange flashed across the road. Zut alors! He jammed his feet on the brakes hard and

Instead I spent the summer touring and doing stand-up, and I decided that whatever happened with Update, I wanted to get better as a performer. I didn’t know how, exactly, outside of getting onstage every night, so I started meeting with an acting coach. This was something I hesitated about doing for a long time because I was embarrassed. Isn’t that dumb? I was embarrassed about getting help. And I was embarrassed about trying. I was scared to put myself out there and commit to getting better, because if I committed and failed then I would have no one to blame but myself. (This probably described my approach to all my relationships up to that point, too.) What I realized was: I might never have this chance again. In fact, I almost certainly would never have this chance again. Did I really want to look back and think: I could have done more, but I was afraid people would think I was lame for trying too hard? I decided to try really hard.

Our team walked through the women’s empowerment center, which was operating in a multistory building, one of the stops we were contemplating for the First Lady. The young man and woman escorting us took us to the roof as part of the tour. I looked out over the city, and other than the bright blue sea, most everything I saw was dusty, arid, and brown except, off in the distance, where I noticed a patch of vibrant green. There were nice buildings and what appeared to be trees and grass. It looked like a desert oasis, or a mirage. “What’s that?” I asked. “That,” our consul general said, “is an Israeli settlement.” “But it’s so green. I thought you said there was very little running water here.” “That’s right,” he said. “There’s limited running water here. The Israelis control the water so twenty times more goes there than comes here.” It was the first time I saw up close what it was like to live under the daily humiliation Palestinians had suffered for years. There it was, a better, easier life, starting right at them.

You could see the future right away here,” Hu Renzhong, a pig and poultry producer, told me. “Food was expensive and people didn’t have enough meat to eat. They couldn’t afford it. The land was good, though, and back then it was still cheap.” Hu received me one morning at his mansion farmhouse on the outskirts of Lusaka, offering me a seat in the marble chill of his enormous living room, before taking me on a long walking tour of his acres and acres of hog-breeding pens and sprawling, temperature-controlled chicken hatcheries, all impressively modern and minutely organized. He had come to Zambia from China’s Jiangxi province in 1995 as a twenty-two-year-old simple laborer, but soon got into business for himself, raising chickens at first with another Chinese immigrant. It wasn’t long before the two had struck it rich, buying land and building ever-bigger houses. “Things had started developing really fast back home, and a lot of people tried to tell me I’d made a mistake,” he said. “But I’ve never really looked back.” I

The road north out of central Lusaka quickly transitions from a world of impressively broad avenues and fancy new commercial districts to a stop-and-start tour of desolate, overcrowded slums. There, half-dressed young men sit around glumly, seemingly lacking the motivation in the face of persistently high unemployment to even bother looking for work. When at last one reaches the highway that leads north to the Copper Belt it is the oncoming traffic that makes the strongest impression. It consists mostly of van after jam-packed van full of poor Zambians. They are overwhelmingly young and desperate to get off the land and they arrive in the capital with dreams of remaking their lives in the big city. When most people think about China’s relationship with Africa they reduce it to a single proposition: securing access to natural resources, of which Africa is the world’s greatest storehouse. As one of the top copper-producing nations, Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa, is doubtlessly a very big part of that story.

I’ve got some good physical therapy for you. Any good at fencing?” Joss almost choked on her mouthful of coffee. She sat up straight in her chair and shook her head. “No, Gus.” Troy ignored her. “I can fence in my sleep.” “Gus.” She narrowed her eyes at her father-in-law who could be stubborn as a mule. “He dislocated his elbow. He shouldn’t be doing any heavy lifting with his arm. Not to mention it’s going to be in a splint for a couple of weeks.” “He’s still got his right arm, don’t he?” “Yeah,” Troy drawled, amusement flattening his vowels even more than usual. “I’ve still got my right arm.” She glared at Gus. “You want to take on a one-armed fencer?” “Damien’s got his summer job starting today so I’m losing my sidekick and Cody’s out with his broken leg for another couple of weeks. It’d be handy to have even one extra hand on.” “I bet I can fence better one-armed than most men can with two.” There was no bravado to the claim. His expression was sincere and Joss believed him. She didn’t doubt this man could do a crap ton of things better than most men.

Okay, so I shouldn't have fucked with her on the introduction thing. Writing nothing except, Saturday night. You and me. Driving lessons and hot sex ... in her notebook probably wasn't the smartest move. But I was itching to make Little Miss Perfecta stumble in her introduction of me. And stumbling she is. "Miss Ellis?" I watch in amusement as Perfection herself looks up at Peterson. Oh, she's good. This partner of mine knows how to hide her true emotions, something I recognize because I do it all the time. "Yes?" Brittany says, tilting her head and smiling like a beauty queen. I wonder if that smile has ever gotten her out of a speeding ticket. "It's your turn. Introduce Alex to the class." I lean an elbow on the lab table, waiting for an introduction she has to either make up or fess up she knows less than crap about me. She glances at my comfortable position and I can tell from her deer-in-the-headlights look I've stumped her. "This is Alejandro Fuentes," she starts, her voice hitching the slightest bit. My temper flares at the mention of my given name, but I keep a cool facade as she continues with a made-up introduction. "When he wasn't hanging out on street corners and harassing innocent people this summer, he toured the inside of jails around the city, if you know what I mean. And he has a secret desire nobody would ever guess." The room suddenly becomes quiet. Even Peterson straightens to attention. Hell, even I'm listening like the words coming out of Brittany's lying, pink-frosted lips are gospel. "His secret desire," she continues, "is to go to college and become a chemistry teacher, like you, Mrs. Peterson." Yeah, right. I look over at my friend Isa, who seems amused that a white girl isn't afraid of giving me smack in front of the entire class. Brittany flashes me a triumphant smile, thinking she's won this round. Guess again, gringa. I sit up in my chair while the class remains silent. "This is Brittany Ellis," I say, all eyes now focused on me. "This summer she went to the mall, bought new clothes so she could expand her wardrobe, and spent her daddy's money on plastic surgery to enhance her, ahem, assets." It might not be what she wrote, but it's probably close enough to the truth. Unlike her introduction of me. Chuckles come from mis cuates in the back of the class, and Brittany is as stiff as a board beside me, as if my words hurt her precious ego. Brittany Ellis is used to people fawning all over her and she could use a little wake-up call. I'm actually doing her a favor. Little does she know I'm not finished with her intro. "Her secret desire," I add, getting the same reaction as she did during her introduction, "is to date a Mexicano before she graduates." As expected, my words are met by comments and low whistles from the back of the room. "Way to go, Fuentes," my friend Lucky barks out. "I'll date you, mamacita, " another says. I give a high five to another Latino Blood named Marcus sitting behind me just as I catch Isa shaking her head as if I did something wrong. What? I'm just having a little fun with a rich girl from the north side. Brittany's gaze shifts from Colin to me. I take one look at Colin and with my eyes tell him game on. Colin's face instantly turns bright red, resembling a chile pepper. I have definitely invaded his territory.

Stately and commanding, the house I found on Sacramento Street, in Lower Pacific Heights, was an architectural jewel; tour buses drove down the street several times a day and the guides pointed out our Victorian “painted lady” not just for its curb appeal but also for its lucky survival of the earthquake. Meticulously renovated, the house had a layout that I was sure would work perfectly: a three-room suite on the lower level with a bathroom and laundry room for my mother, living space on the next level, and, on the top floor, bedrooms for Zoë and me. The master bedroom was large enough to double as my office. Moreover, it seemed symbolic that we should find a three-story nineteenth-century Victorian, whose original intention was to house multiple generations. My mother couldn’t have been more pleased. She started calling our experiment “our year in Provence.” In the face of naysayers, I chose to embrace the reaction of a friend who was living in Beijing: “How Chinese of you!” she said upon hearing the news. When I told my mother, she was delighted. “What have the Chinese got on us?” she declared. And I agreed. The Chinese revere their elderly. If they could live happily with multiple generations under one roof, so could we.

attention — my abused body, my lack of sleep, my mandatory marriage, and the terror of being unable to satisfy President Snow’s demands. By the time I reach lunch, where Effie, Cinna, Portia, Haymitch, and Peeta have started without me, I’m too weighed down to talk. They’re raving about the food and how well they sleep on trains. Everyone’s all full of excitement about the tour. Well, everyone but Haymitch. He’s nursing a hangover and picking at a muffin. I’m not really hungry, either, maybe because I loaded up on too much rich stuff this morning or maybe because I’m so unhappy. I play around with a bowl of broth, eating only a spoonful or two. I can’t even look at Peeta — my designated future husband — although I know none of this is his fault. People notice, try to bring me into the conversation, but I just brush them off. At some point, the train stops. Our server reports it will not just be for a fuel stop — some part has malfunctioned and must be replaced. It will require at least an hour. This sends Effie into a state. She pulls out her schedule and begins to work out how the delay will impact every event for the rest of our lives. Finally I just can’t stand to listen to her anymore. “No one cares, Effie!” I snap. Everyone

Well, let me weave together various sorts of tales, using the Milesian mode as a loom, if you will. Witty and dulcet tones are going to stroke your too-kind ears—as long as you don’t turn a spurning nose up at an Egyptian papyrus scrawled over with a sharp pen from the Nile. I’ll make you wonder at human forms and fortunes transfigured, torn apart but then mended back into their original state. Now to my preface. ‘Who’s writing there?’ you ask. In a few words: my ancient stock is from Attic Hymettus and the Ephyrean Isthmus and Spartan Taenarus. All that fertile sod has been immortalized by books more fertile still. There, as my boyhood began, I served my first tour of literary duty in the Athenian tongue. Then as a foreigner in the Latian city I invaded the speech native to the Quirites’ curriculum, settled on it, and worked it for all it was worth – and it was harrowing, as I had no teacher walking ahead and pointing out what to do. So here I am, pleading in advance to be let off if I commit some offense, as I’m still a greenhorn: to me, the speech of the Roman forum is outlandish. But this very change of language suits the genre-jumping training I have undertaken. The story we are starting has a Greek original, you see. Give heed, reader: there is delight to be had.

It was when Maya showed me the benches at Gallaudet University that I started to glimpse sound—the physical structure of it, the elastic bounce of its travel. My friends who are deaf have always told me that sound also belongs to them—that hearing people are forever getting it wrong to imagine deafness as a “silent world”—but the benches were the thing that made this idea vividly real. They were a feature in the design at the scale of rooms at Gallaudet, alongside a dozen other architectural choices that a hearing person could easily miss. Maya had paused for a moment in our campus tour to point them out, standing in the middle of a big, airy common space lined with windows on three sides, the lobby of a dorm where many students study and socialize, alone or in groups. The benches serve as seating for nearby wood tables, sets that are interspersed with soft fabric chairs arranged 360 degrees around for discussion. “Wood is the best material for this kind of group seating,” she told me, and mimed lightly slapping the wood with her palm. The resonance of wood makes it reverberate when struck. Students sometimes tap or slap nearby surfaces to get one another’s attention or to call a group to order, she said, and materials like concrete or thick plastics tend to absorb the sound rather than scatter it productively.

Charlotte had the blondest hair I’ve ever seen. She didn’t shake my hand but gave me a quick little wave and smiled. “Hi, August. Nice to meet you,” she said. “Hi,” I said, looking down. She was wearing bright green Crocs. “So,” said Mr. Tushman, putting his hands together in a kind of slow clap. “What I thought you guys could do is take August on a little tour of the school. Maybe you could start on the third floor? That’s where your homeroom class is going to be: room 301. I think. Mrs. G, is—” “Room 301!” Mrs. Garcia called out from the other room. “Room 301.” Mr. Tushman nodded. “And then you can show August the science labs and the computer room. Then work your way down to the library and the performance space on the second floor. Take him to the cafeteria, of course.” “Should we take him to the music room?” asked Julian. “Good idea, yes,” said Mr. Tushman. “August, do you play any instruments?” “No,” I said. It wasn’t my favorite subject on account of the fact that I don’t really have ears. Well, I do, but they don’t exactly look like normal ears. “Well, you may enjoy seeing the music room anyway,” said Mr. Tushman. “We have a very nice selection of percussion instruments.” “August, you’ve been wanting to learn to play the drums,” Mom said, trying to get me to look at her. But my eyes were covered by my bangs as I stared at a piece of old gum that was stuck to the

Winterborne, who was standing beside a plate-glass counter and looking down at its contents, glanced up at their approach. “Welcome,” he said, a smile in his eyes. “Is this what you had expected?” The question was addressed to the group, but his gaze had gone to Helen. The twins erupted with happy exclamations and praise, while Helen shook her head and smiled. “It’s even more grand than I had imagined,” she told him. “Let me take you on a tour.” Winterborne slid a questioning glance to the rest of the group. “Would any of you like to accompany us? Or perhaps you’d like to start shopping?” He gestured to a stack of rattan baskets near the counter. The twins looked at each other, and decisively said, “Shopping.” Winterborne grinned. “The confectionery and books are in that direction. Drugs and perfumery over there. Back there you’ll find hats, scarves, ribbons, and lace.” Before he had even finished the sentence, the twins had each grabbed a basket and dashed away. “Girls…” Kathleen began, disconcerted by their wildness, but they were already out of earshot. She looked at Winterborne ruefully. “For your own safety, try to stay out of their path or you’ll be trampled.” “You should have seen how the ladies behaved during my first bi-annual sale discounts,” Winterborne told her. “Violence. Screaming. I’d rather go through the train accident again.” Kathleen couldn’t help smiling.

Onboarding checklists Business orientation checklist As early as possible, get access to publicly available information about financials, products, strategy, and brands. Identify additional sources of information, such as websites and analyst reports. If appropriate for your level, ask the business to assemble a briefing book. If possible, schedule familiarization tours of key facilities before the formal start date. Stakeholder connection checklist Ask your boss to identify and introduce you to the key people you should connect with early on. If possible, meet with some stakeholders before the formal start. Take control of your calendar, and schedule early meetings with key stakeholders. Be careful to focus on lateral relationships (peers, others) and not only vertical ones (boss, direct reports). Expectations alignment checklist Understand and engage in business planning and performance management. No matter how well you think you understand what you need to do, schedule a conversation with your boss about expectations in your first week. Have explicit conversations about working styles with bosses and direct reports as early as possible. Cultural adaptation checklist During recruiting, ask questions about the organization’s culture. Schedule conversations with your new boss and HR to discuss work culture, and check back with them regularly. Identify people inside the organization who could serve as culture interpreters. After thirty days, conduct an informal 360-degree check-in with your boss and peers to gauge how adaptation is proceeding.

SILVER CITY IS NO PLACE FOR AMATEURS I left Colorado Springs the next morning and got back in the fucking car for another day of driving for the Tour of the Gila. I’d never driven in snow before, but I made it to Santa Fe and then Albuquerque in the afternoon, careful to dodge all the tumbleweeds on the highway in New Mexico. I hadn’t known that those existed outside of cartoons. Already exhausted when I got off the interstate, I was surprised when my GPS said “48 miles remaining, 1.5 hours’ drive time”—I was sure that couldn’t be right. Then I saw the steep climbs, bumpy cattle guards, and dangerous descents on the road into Silver City. I drove as fast as I could, sliding my poor car around hairpins in the dark. I made it to the host house, fell asleep, and found two flat tires when I went outside to unpack the car in the morning. They probably weren’t meant for drifting. My luck didn’t improve when the race started. I got a flat tire when I went off the road to dodge a crash, and I chased for over an hour to get back to the field. Between the dry air and altitude, I got a major nosebleed. My car was parked at the base of the finishing climb, and I got there several minutes behind the field, my new white Cannondale and all my clothes covered in blood. The course turned right to go up the climb, and I turned left, climbed into my car, and got the hell out of there. I might have made the time cut, but for the second time in two weeks, I opted to climb in the car instead. I got out of that town like I was about to turn into a pumpkin, and made it back to San Diego nine hours later. If there wasn’t a Pacific Ocean to stop me, I’d have driven another day, just to get farther from Gila.

It was at night,” I say. “What was?” “What happened. The car wreck. We were driving along the Storm King Highway.” “Where’s that?” “Oh, it’s one of the most scenic drives in the whole state,” I say, somewhat sarcastically. “Route 218. The road that connects West Point and Cornwall up in the Highlands on the west side of the Hudson River. It’s narrow and curvy and hangs off the cliffs on the side of Storm King Mountain. An extremely twisty two-lane road. With a lookout point and a picturesque stone wall to stop you from tumbling off into the river. Motorcycle guys love Route 218.” We stop moving forward and pause under a streetlamp. “But if you ask me, they shouldn’t let trucks use that road.” Cool Girl looks at me. “Go on, Jamie,” she says gently. And so I do. “Like I said, it was night. And it was raining. We’d gone to West Point to take the tour, have a picnic. It was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky until the tour was over, and then it started pouring. Guess we stayed too late. Me, my mom, my dad.” Now I bite back the tears. “My little sister. Jenny. You would’ve liked Jenny. She was always happy. Always laughing. “We were on a curve. All of a sudden, this truck comes around the side of the cliff. It’s halfway in our lane and fishtailing on account of the slick road. My dad slams on the brakes. Swerves right. We smash into a stone fence and bounce off it like we’re playing wall ball. The hood of our car slides under the truck, right in front of its rear tires—tires that are smoking and screaming and trying to stop spinning.” I see it all again. In slow motion. The detail never goes away. “They all died,” I finally say. “My mother, my father, my little sister. I was the lucky one. I was the only one who survived.

One of Castro’s first acts as Cuba’s Prime Minister was to go on a diplomatic tour that started on April 15, 1959. His first stop was the United States, where he met with Vice President Nixon, after having been snubbed by President Eisenhower, who thought it more important to go golfing than to encourage friendly relations with a neighboring country. It seemed that the U.S. Administration did not take the new Cuban Prime Minister seriously after he showed up dressed in revolutionary garb. Delegating his Vice President to meet the new Cuban leader was an obvious rebuff. However, what was worse was that an instant dislike developed between the two men, when Fidel Castro met Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon. This dislike was amplified when Nixon openly badgered Castro with anti-communistic rhetoric. Once again, Castro explained that he was not a Communist and that he was with the West in the Cold War. However, during this period following the McCarthy era, Nixon was not listening. During Castro’s tour to the United States, Canada and Latin America, everyone in Cuba listened intently to what he had to say. Fidel’s speeches, that were shown on Cuban television, were troubling to Raúl and he feared that his brother was deviating from Cuba’s path towards communism. Becoming concerned by Fidel’s candid remarks, Raúl conferred with his close friend “Che” Guevara, and finally called Fidel about how he was being perceived in Cuba. Following this conversation, Raúl flew to Texas where he met with his brother Fidel in Houston. Raúl informed him that the Cuban press saw his diplomacy as a concession to the United States. The two brothers argued openly at the airport and again later at the posh Houston Shamrock Hotel, where they stayed. With the pressure on Fidel to embrace Communism he reluctantly agreed…. In time he whole heartily accepted Communism as the philosophy for the Cuban Government.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK WHAT TO DO FIRST 1. Find the MAP. It will be there. No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one. It will be found in the front part of your brochure, quite near the page that says For Mom and Dad for having me and for Jeannie (or Jack or Debra or Donnie or …) for putting up with me so supportively and for my nine children for not interrupting me and for my Publisher for not discouraging me and for my Writers’ Circle for listening to me and for Barbie and Greta and Albert Einstein and Aunty May and so on. Ignore this, even if you are wondering if Albert Einstein is Albert Einstein or in fact the dog. This will be followed by a short piece of prose that says When the night of the wolf waxes strong in the morning, the wise man is wary of a false dawn. Ka’a Orto’o, Gnomic Utterances Ignore this too (or, if really puzzled, look up GNOMIC UTTERANCES in the Toughpick section). Find the Map. 2. Examine the Map. It will show most of a continent (and sometimes part of another) with a large number of BAYS, OFFSHORE ISLANDS, an INLAND SEA or so and a sprinkle of TOWNS. There will be scribbly snakes that are probably RIVERS, and names made of CAPITAL LETTERS in curved lines that are not quite upside down. By bending your neck sideways you will be able to see that they say things like “Ca’ea Purt’wydyn” and “Om Ce’falos.” These may be names of COUNTRIES, but since most of the Map is bare it is hard to tell. These empty inland parts will be sporadically peppered with little molehills, invitingly labeled “Megamort Hills,” “Death Mountains, ”Hurt Range” and such, with a whole line of molehills near the top called “Great Northern Barrier.” Above this will be various warnings of danger. The rest of the Map’s space will be sparingly devoted to little tiny feathers called “Wretched Wood” and “Forest of Doom,” except for one space that appears to be growing minute hairs. This will be tersely labeled “Marshes.” This is mostly it. No, wait. If you are lucky, the Map will carry an arrow or compass-heading somewhere in the bit labeled “Outer Ocean” and this will show you which way up to hold it. But you will look in vain for INNS, reststops, or VILLAGES, or even ROADS. No – wait another minute – on closer examination, you will find the empty interior crossed by a few bird tracks. If you peer at these you will see they are (somewhere) labeled “Old Trade Road – Disused” and “Imperial Way – Mostly Long Gone.” Some of these routes appear to lead (or have lead) to small edifices enticingly titled “Ruin,” “Tower of Sorcery,” or “Dark Citadel,” but there is no scale of miles and no way of telling how long you might take on the way to see these places. In short, the Map is useless, but you are advised to keep consulting it, because it is the only one you will get. And, be warned. If you take this Tour, you are going to have to visit every single place on this Map, whether it is marked or not. This is a Rule. 3. Find your STARTING POINT. Let us say it is the town of Gna’ash. You will find it down in one corner on the coast, as far away from anywhere as possible. 4. Having found Gna’ash, you must at once set about finding an INN, Tour COMPANIONS, a meal of STEW, a CHAMBER for the night, and then the necessary TAVERN BRAWL. (If you look all these things up in the Toughpick section, you will know what you are in for.) The following morning, you must locate the MARKET and attempt to acquire CLOTHING (which absolutely must include a CLOAK), a SADDLE ROLL, WAYBREAD, WATERBOTTLES, a DAGGER, a SWORD, a HORSE, and a MERCHANT to take you along in his CARAVAN. You must resign yourself to being cheated over most prices and you are advised to consult a local MAGICIAN about your Sword. 5. You set off. Now you are on your own. You should turn to the Toughpick section of this brochure and select your Tour on a pick-and-mix basis, remembering only that you will have to take in all of it.

The young lady then placed her hands on Kode’s shoulder, letting her cheek rest on top of the pile. The smile on her face was more than a victory smile. It was a happy sign of contentment. Eena wondered. “When do you suppose those two will get married?” She whispered the question to Kira who still had a firm grip on her arm. “Kode get married?” The incredulity on Kira’s face matched her brother’s strong outburst. “Who the hell says I’m gettin’ hitched?” Niki pushed herself away from her boyfriend’s shoulder; her upper lip curled into a resentful scowl at the negative way he had voiced his query. Eena had never meant for them to overhear. She stumbled over a justification for the question. “It’s just that you’ve been together for a while, you know, like a couple. Close. I mean, you’re always together so…I just figured…” she let the notion trail off. Kode looked queasy. “We’re always together ‘cause she bloody follows me around everywhere I go like I’m some freakin’ tour guide!” “Fine!” Niki exclaimed, holding her palms like a defensive wall in front of her. “I’ll leave if that’s what you want. I don’t need you! There’s plenty of other guys who’d love to get their lips on me!” With that outburst, the pretty Mishmorat twirled her body around, setting off on foot with both fists seared into her hips. Kode let her take about four steps before he darted over and dragged her back. She didn’t put up much of a fight, but her beautiful burgundy eyes refused to look at him. “Ungrateful woman,” he murmured. “No one asked you to leave.” Niki continued to glare up at the cloudy sky. Kode sighed a long, perturbed sound. His next words were mumbled like they were torturous to have to speak out loud. “Come on, Niki, you know I don’t want you to go. Who the hell’s gonna keep me in line if you’re gone?” That made the pretty Mishmorat smile. She breathed in deeply and then dropped her gaze onto her man. His face was a goofy grimace, hers a smug grin of satisfaction. Kode threw an arm roughly around his girlfriend and pulled her close to him. He then turned to Eena, shrugging one shoulder. “She’ll probably break down and marry me this summer,” he said. “That’s what I’m thinkin’ anyway.” Niki’s head went back to rest on Kode’s shoulder, right where it had started.

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.

We hear more about dignity and “pensive luster” from cultures where the patina of age is highly valued, from the shutaku (soil from handling) in Chinese culture or the Japanese concept of nare that garners a reverence over “shallow brilliance,” objects with too much finish. 12 In France, low radiance, the mere shine off a coin, was once enough to mark the start and end of the workday in winter, it was “the moment when there was not enough light to distinguish a denier [a small coin] of Tours from a denier of Paris.” 13 The light that begins and ends these uncommon journeys requires a similar sensitivity to their sheen. It often takes a blaze to see things anew. So age upon age has had its icons who went unsung during their lifetime. When Herman Melville died as a customs agent at the Port of New York in 1891, his widow complained that the copyright of White Jacket (1850) and Moby-Dick (1851) had no worth; they “give no income and have no market value.” 14 It took nearly seventy years for Moby-Dick to receive its critical acclaim. In the final months of writing the book, Melville suspected as much, and acrimoniously foretold his fate: “though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.” 15 Our lodestars often shine a few foot-candles below the level we are prepared to see.

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson later said that there should be a “consilience” between art and science. 79 Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison took selected images with her on her first trip to space, including a poster of dancer and former artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Judith Jamison performing the dance Cry, and a Bundu statue from Sierra Leone, because, as she said, “the creativity that allowed us . . . to conceive and build and launch the space shuttle, springs from the same source as the imagination and analysis it took to carve a Bundu statue, or the ingenuity it took to design, choreograph, and stage ‘Cry.’ . . . That’s what we have to reconcile in our minds, how these things fit together.” 80 As a jazz musician once told me, musicians are mathematicians as well as artists. Morse’s story suggests that the argument started not because of the need to bring art and science together, but because they were once not so far apart. 81 When Frank Jewett Mather Jr. of The Nation stated that Morse “was an inventor superimposed upon an artist,” it was factually true. 82 Equally true is that Morse could become an inventor because he was an artist all the while. In one of the final paintings that laid him flat, the painting that failed to secure his last attempt at a commission, one he had worked fifteen years to achieve, Morse may have left a clue about his shift from art to invention, and the fact that the skills required for both are the same. He painted The House of Representatives (1822–23) as evidence of his suitability for a commission from Congress to complete a suite of paintings that still adorn the U.S. Capitol building. The painting has an odd compositional focus. In the center is a man screwing in an oil chandelier, preoccupied with currents. Morse was “rejected beyond hope of appeal” by the congressional commission led by John Quincy Adams. When he toured the picture for seven weeks—displayed in a coffee house in Salem, Massachusetts, and at exhibitions in New York, Boston, Middleton, and Hartford, Connecticut—it lost twenty dollars in the first two weeks. Compounded by a litany of embarrassing, near-soul-stealing artistic failures, he took to his bed for weeks, “more seriously depressed than ever.” This final rejection forced him to shift his energies to his telegraph invention. 83 By 1844 Morse went to the Capitol focused on a current that would occupy the work of Congress—obtaining a patent for the telegraph.

Treasure Hunters Who Followed the Restalls When I started this book, I intended to tell the full Oak Island story, including those treasure hunters who came after the Restalls. But space will not allow it, so we will have to be satisfied with the briefest of highlights. • Robert Dunfield was the first treasure hunter after the accident. He had a causeway built connecting the mainland to Oak Island. It allowed mammoth equipment to be moved over to the island. Down at the Money Pit end of the island, no work was done to stop the sea water, but the huge machinery moved soil from this place to that in search of the treasure. The work gouged out part of the clearing so that the Money Pit, which had been 32 feet above sea level, was reduced to just 10 feet. His work drastically changed the terrain, giving free rein to the incoming sea water. It turned that end of the island into a huge heap of slippery mud. No treasure was found. • Dan Blankenship and David Tobias formed Triton Alliance Limited, the next treasure-hunting company. After drilling countless exploratory holes, they put down a mammoth caisson; Dan climbed down inside, but the caisson began to slowly collapse, threatening to crush the life out of him. He barely escaped. Before this near-fatal event, Triton had located and videotaped what many believe to be evidence of treasure within a huge cavern beneath the bedrock of the island. Their video also revealed what appears to be a human hand. • Oak Island Tours Inc., the final treasure-hunting company, is still at work on Oak Island. In fact, they have only just begun. This company includes a pervious Oak Island treasure hunter, Dan Blankenship, and four newcomers from Michigan--Craig Tester, Marty Lagina, Rick Lagina, and Alan J. Kostrzewa. It is reported that they possess adequate financing to see the job through to a successful end. I’ve exchanged emails with one of these men from Michigan and met face-to-face with another, and I’m convinced that they respect the island and the searchers who went before them and that they will give their search for treasure their very best effort. I wish them every success.

My reign has been anything but traditional. Let’s not start now, shall we?

I can’t believe our entire tour is being taken out, one by one, all because of some stupid virus. We’ll probably all be dead by the time the day tour starts.

the leader of the troupe, looked carefully at the girl in front of him. She was a real windfall, and since she herself was prepared to starve with them, he had no objection. She might even, if she had talent as she said, be good for the troupe. For years now he’d been traveling all over Greece. He had given performances in cafés, in the open air, even in barns. Once, when he was young, he had begun his career with lots of dreams, and he’d played beside some serious actors of the day. He’d managed to make a name for himself, but he very soon started to get into the drink. The beginning of the end had arrived, but he hadn’t understood it at the time. He began to forget his words onstage and to delay his entrances, creating gaps in the performance. Soon he stopped being in demand. When he met Zoe, he stopped drinking, but it was too late. Nobody trusted him, nobody would offer him even a small role. But the bug for acting didn’t leave him. He formed his own troupe and from then on he traveled around the countryside. A lot of people had been with him and moved on. Some were real actors and some didn’t want to believe that they would never become actors. Very occasionally, real talent had appeared beside him, but precisely because of that talent they always left for some theater in Athens. He had suffered hundreds of humiliations. Frustrated by the troupe’s poor performances, audiences often threw whatever they found at them, forcing the show to end. And it wasn’t so unusual for them to have to flee from a village in the night so that the disgruntled locals, who felt they’d been cheated after such a bad show, didn’t beat them up. Tickets were often used to barter for eggs, honey, corn, even vegetables—the important thing was for the troupe to eat. When they were lucky, though, they ate in a restaurant. They’d been able to do so today because the tour in Pieria had gone very well thanks to Martha, the woman who was observing Polyxeni so carefully. Lambros had to admit that her acting had saved the whole troupe. She’d been with them for two months, and things

We have to decide how to start our research,” Ashley said. “Like, should we look for information on the whole town, or just one specific area. Roo and I decided we should all focus on the Brickway.” “You decided we should all focus on the Brickway,” Roo mumbled, popping the tab on her can. Gage nodded. “Ashley’s right. If this is a walking tour, some kids in our class might not want to walk very far.” “If, in fact, anybody wants to walk on this tour at all,” Parker couldn’t help adding. “Come on…we’re not really going to do this ghost stuff, are we?” Ashley rolled her eyes. “Well then, maybe we should have transportation. Maybe we could use our cars?” “Our cars? Etienne and I are the only ones with wheels.” “What a perfectly brilliant idea, Ash.” Roo shot her sister a bland look. “Ghost BMW. No…wait. Ghost Truck. I’m all tingly with dread.” “Or Ghost SUV?” Despite Ashley’s wounded expression, Parker clasped his hands beseechingly at Gage. “Oh, pretty please, can we use your mom’s minivan?” Ashley’s lips tightened. “Parker, this is serious!” “Look, I know it’s half our grade.” Easing back down, he took a swig of beer and tried to reason with her. “But let’s face it--the whole thing’s pretty stupid. And impossible.” “It’s not stupid. And why is it impossible? All we have to do is research old places that might be haunted.” “And just how do you propose we do that? Oh wait, I know--let’s just knock on people’s doors. Excuse me, we’re doing a survey--are there any creepy ghosts living in your house? Ash, come on. We can’t force things to be haunted just so they can be close enough to walk to.” A disappointed silence fell. For several minutes everyone seemed lost in thought, till Etienne unfolded himself from the tree. “Don’t y’all know anything about your own town?” He walked over to the cooler and pulled out a beer. To Miranda, who watched him, he moved with all the grace and stealth of a predatory cat. “Well, I’m not going to flunk this project,” Ashley said crossly, “just because Parker’s an idiot.” Roo promptly frowned. “Where’s your compassion? Parker can’t help being an idiot.

They’d reached the Historical Society. Before anyone could go inside, Parker started backing away. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Ashley scolded him. “It won’t kill you to see your mother.” “But I haven’t seen her in weeks, so the shock really could kill me.” He paused on the curb, grin widening. “Besides, I wouldn’t even know what she looks like. And besides that, somebody still needs to find out if we can take tours inside some of these businesses. So I volunteer.” “Right,” Gage answered. “Like you’re suddenly so interested.” “Hey, never let it be said that I’m not a team player!” “A cowardly team player!” Ashley shot back.

Okay, y’all,” Ashley announced. “This is our dress rehearsal. Our last chance to get everything perfect before the big night tomorrow. Any questions? Ideas? Opinions?” “Yeah, I have an idea.” Slumped on the front steps of the Battlefield Inn, Parker choked down a mouthful of cough syrup and tried not to speak above a whisper. “Let’s call it off. That would really make it perfect. No more ghost tour.” “Walk of the Spirits,” Ashley corrected him, irritated. “Walk of the Spirits. And we’re not calling it off. After all this time? All this work?” “All this suffering?” Roo added. She was perched one step below Parker, and was digging through her pockets for a cigarette. Her face still bore some major bruises from the storm, and a wide gash zigzagged across her forehead, not quite healed. She’d taken great pains to highlight this zigzag with dark, red lipstick. “You like suffering,” Parker reminded her. “And, excuse me, but you’re not the one with pneumonia.” "You don’t have pneumonia. You’re just jealous because Gage was in worse shape than you, and he got more attention.” “Well, it’s almost pneumonia. It’s turning into pneumonia.” Tensing, Parker let out a gigantic sneeze. “Shit, I hate this. I feel like my brain’s ten times its normal size.” Roo gave him a bland stare. “You know, when people lose a leg or an arm, they think they still feel it, even though it’s not really there.” “Will you two behave?” Ashley scolded. “And, Parker, where’s that newspaper article your mom was going to give us?” “Somewhere.” Parker thought a moment, then shrugged. “In my car, I think.” “Well, will you please go get it? The sooner we start, the sooner we can all go home.” “She’s right.” Though unable to hold back a laugh, Miranda came loyally to Ashley’s rescue. “Let’s just walk it through, and read the script, and make sure we’ve covered all the basic information. Ashley, what about your costume?” “I’ve got the final fitting after I leave here.” Ashley’s eyes shone with excitement. “Can you believe Mrs. Wilmington went to all that trouble to make it for me?” “She didn’t.” Parker scowled. “She got her dressmaker, or designer, or whoever the hell she calls him, to make it for you.” “Parker, that doesn’t matter--it was still really nice of your mother to do that.” “You’re a southern belle--how could she resist that?” Ashley shot Miranda a grateful smile. “That was Miranda’s idea.” “It made sense,” Miranda explained. “A costume sets the mood. It’s all about southern history and heritage, so our tour guide should be a southern hostess--hoopskirt and all.” “And I’m the only one who gets to dress up! And I can’t wait to wear it! It’s like cotton candy!” Roo arched an eyebrow. “Sticky?” “No! All pink and fluffy and…sweet. I love the way I feel in it.” “I agree,” Parker said hoarsely. “I love the way you feel in it, too. And I love the way you feel out of it even better.” Roo stared at him. “Wow. You should write greeting cards.

States, in the name of austerity, have stopped providing prisoners with essential items including shoes, extra blankets, and even toilet paper, while starting to charge them for electricity and room and board. Most prisoners and the families that struggle to support them are chronically short of money. When they go broke—and being broke is a frequent occurrence in prison—prisoners must take out prison loans to pay for medications, legal and medical fees, and basic commissary items such as soap and deodorant. Debt peonage inside prison is as prevalent as it is outside prison. Prisoners are charged for visits to the infirmary and the dentist. Prisoners must pay the state for a fifteen-minute deathbed visit to an immediate family member, or for a fifteen-minute visit to a funeral home to view the deceased. New Jersey, like most other states, forces a prisoner to reimburse the system for overtime wages paid to the two guards who accompany him or her to the visit or viewing, plus mileage cost. The charge can be as high as $945.04 in New Jersey. It can take years to pay off a visit with a dying father or mother when you make less than $30 a month.

It takes brutality and force to make a person work for free and live in the type of conditions we live in and not do anything about it,” Ray said. “The only way they made slavery work was to use force. It is no different in the slave empire of prisons. They use brutality to hold it together. And this brutality will not go away until the system goes away.” “They stood me up against the wall [with my hands cuffed behind me],” Pleasant said. “There were about ten officers. They started swinging, punching, and hitting me with sticks. They knocked my legs out from under me. My face hit the floor. They stomped on my face. They sent me to the infirmary to hide what they did, for thirty days. When I looked in the mirror I could not recognize my facial features. This was the fourth time I was beaten like this.

Cycling isn’t load-bearing because the bike supports your body weight. Studies have shown that some professional racers competing at a Tour de France level have a bone mineral density well below average for their age.

The thing that should most strike you when coming to John’s Gospel from having read the Synoptics is how different it is. Not only is the basic scene of Jesus’ ministry different (Jerusalem instead of Galilee), but the whole ministry looks quite different. Here you find no messianic secret (Jesus is openly confessed as Messiah from the start); no parables (but rich use of symbolic language); no driving out of demons; no narratives of the testing in the desert, the Transfiguration, or the Lord’s Supper. Rather than placing emphasis on the kingdom of God, the emphasis is on Jesus himself (the Life who gives eternal life); rather than short, pithy, memorable sayings, the teaching comes most often in long discourses.

In a letter written to the play's director, Peter Wood, on 30th March 1958, just before the start of rehearsals, Pinter rightly refused to add extra lines explaining or justifying Stanley's motives in withdrawing from the world into a dingy seaside boarding-house: 'Stanley cannot perceive his only valid justification - which is he is what he is - therefore he certainly can never be articulate about it.' But Pinter came much closer than he usually does to offering an explanation of the finished work: We've agreed: the hierarchy, the Establishment, the arbiters, the socio- religious monsters arrive to affect censure and alteration upon a member of the club who has discarded responsibility (that word again) towards himself and others. (What is your opinion, by the way, of the act of suicide?) He does possess, however, for my money, a certain fibre - he fights for his life. It doesn't last long, this fight. His core being a quagmire of delusion, his mind a tenuous fuse box, he collapses under the weight of their accusation - an accusation compounded of the shit- stained strictures of centuries of 'tradition'. This gets us right to the heart of the matter. It is not simply a play about a pathetic victim brainwashed into social conformity. It is a play about the need to resist, with the utmost vigour, dead ideas and the inherited weight of the past. And if you examine the text, you notice how Pinter has toughened up the original image of the man in the Eastbourne digs with 'nowhere to go'. Pinter's Stanley Webber - a palpably Jewish name, incidentally - is a man who shores up his precarious sense of self through fantasy, bluff, violence and his own manipulative form of power-play. His treatment of Meg initially is rough, playful, teasing: he's an ersatz, scarpegrace Oedipus to her boardinghouse Jocasta. But once she makes the fateful, mood-changing revelation - 'I've got to get things in for the two gentlemen' - he's as dangerous as a cornered animal. He affects a wanton grandeur with his talk of a European concert tour. He projects his own fear on to Meg by terrorising her with stories of nameless men coming to abduct her in a van. In his first solo encounter with McCann, he tries to win him over by appealing to a shared past (Maidenhead, Fuller's tea shop, Boots library) and a borrowed patriotism ('I know Ireland very well. I've many friends there. I love that country and I admire and trust its people... I think their policemen are wonderful'). At the start of the interrogation he resists Goldberg's injunction to sit down and at the end of it he knees him in the stomach. And in the panic of the party, he attempts to strangle Meg and rape Lulu. These are hardly the actions of a supine victim. Even though Stanley is finally carried off shaven, besuited, white-collared and ostensibly tamed, the spirit of resistance is never finally quelled. When asked how he regards the prospect of being able to 'make or break' in the integrated outer world, he does not stay limply silent, but produces the most terrifying noises.

Peeking through the thick glass, Cass saw Falco’s distorted form just outside the servants’ door. “Cassssssaaaandra.” He stretched her name out playfully as he knocked on the door. At this rate he was going to wake up the whole villa. Cass slipped outside, shutting the door behind her with a firm click. “You need to be quiet,” she said, shielding her candle from the night breeze. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Cass tried to slow her breathing. There’s no reason to be nervous. And yet, for some reason, she couldn’t catch her breath. “My aunt is gone,” she blurted out, blushing when she realized how it sounded. Falco’s eyes widened in fake shock. “Well, then perhaps I should ask for a tour of the house.” He grinned, clearly relishing Cass’s embarrassment. “Can we start with your bedroom?

The thing most people don't plan for in my industry is longevity. I try and remind them, this is the business of protection, and as such, we’ve got to think about it like it’s a business. Once you understand business norms and business principles, and then start applying those, that’s where you get that longevity from.

I turn my face to the window as the train starts to move. Charles suggested I take the car, but I prefer this strange elevated route out of town, the rooftop tour of south London as the carriages rattle between spires and old smokestacks and the tips of poplars; the sudden glimpses into school playgrounds and street markets and quiet litter-strewn alleys, narrow avenues of blackened brick. Little by little the city falls away, like something giving up, and then the acoustics of the carriage change, and we're out in the open: meadows riven with streams, the fast blue shadows of clouds on the hills.

Idling the dinghy, bringing it quietly in closer and closer to the croc, Steve would finally make his move. He’d creep to the front of the boat and hold the spotlight until the last moment. Then he would leap into the water. Grabbing the crocodile around the scruff of the neck, he would secure its tail between his legs and wrap his body around the thrashing creature. Crocodiles are amazingly strong in the water. Even a six-foot-long subadult would easily take Steve to the bottom of the river, rolling and fighting, trying to dislodge him by scraping against the rocks and snags at the bottom of the river. But Steve would hang on. He knew he could push off the bottom, reach the surface for air, flip the crocodile into his dinghy, and pin the snapping animal down. “Piece of cake,” he said. That was the most incredible story I had ever heard. And Steve was the most incredible man I had ever seen--catching crocodiles by hand to save their lives? This was just unreal. I had an overwhelming sensation. I wanted to build a big campfire, sit down with Steve next to it, and hear his stories all night long. I didn’t want them to ever end. But eventually the tour was over, and I felt I just had to talk to this man. Steve had a broad, easy smile and the biggest hands I had ever seen. I could tell by his stature and stride that he was accustomed to hard work. I saw a series of small scars on the sides of his face and down his arms. He came up and, with a broad Australian accent, said, “G’day, mate.” Uh-oh, I thought. I’m in trouble. I’d never, ever believed in love at first sight. But I had the strangest, most overwhelming feeling that it was destiny that took me into that little wildlife park that day. Steve started talking to me as if we’d known each other all our lives. I interrupted only to have my friend Lori take a picture of us, and the moment I first met Steve was forever captured. I told him about my wildlife rescue work with cougars in Oregon. He told me about his work with crocodiles. The tour was long over, and the zoo was about to close, but we kept talking. Finally I could hear Lori honking her horn in the car park. “I have to go,” I said to Steve, managing a grim smile. I felt a connection as I never had before, and I was about to leave, never to see him again. “Why do you love cougars so much?” he asked, walking me toward the park’s front gate. I had to think for a beat. There were many reasons. “I think it’s how they can actually kill with their mouths,” I finally said. “They can conquer an animal several times their size, grab it in their jaws, and kill it instantly by snapping its neck.” Steve grinned. I hadn’t realized how similar we really were. “That’s what I love about crocodiles,” he said. “They are the most powerful apex predators.” Apex predators. Meaning both cougars and crocs were at the top of the food chain. On opposite sides of the world, this man and I had somehow formed the same interest, the same passion. At the zoo entrance I could see Lori and her friends in the car, anxious to get going back to Brisbane. “Call the zoo if you’re ever here again,” Steve said. “I’d really like to see you again.” Could it be that he felt the same way I did? As we drove back to Brisbane, I was quiet, contemplative. I had no idea how I would accomplish it, but I was determined to figure out a way to see him. The next weekend, Lori was going diving with a friend, and I took a chance and called Steve. “What do you reckon, could I come back for the weekend?” I asked. “Absolutely. I’ll take care of everything,” came Steve’s reply.

Estes Park was set in a valley surrounded by the Rocky Mountain National Park.... When I visited a few years ago, there were actually elk grazing on the golf course." "Are you serious?" "Hey, every year in October they have an Elk Festival. That's why I came here. I wanted to see it 'cause it was on my bucket list." "An Elk Festival?" Amelia laughed. "You have the most awesome things on your bucket list. Mine seem boring compared to yours." Amelia raised her brow curiously. "What was the festival like?" "It was awesome. They had an elk bugling contest, elk seminars, Native American music, dancing and storytelling. They even had bus tours that took you to see the elk grazing in the fields. It was great. I loved it." "Wait a minute," said Amelia as she tilted her head to one side. "What's an elk bugling contest?" Rick grinned. "It's the call of the elk. Anyone can compete. Whoever sounds the most like an elk wins. You can use a horn or just your own voice. When I was there, the man who won used his voice. It was really something." Amelia's eyes widened with curiosity. "How did he do it? What does it sounds like?" Rick chuckled. "Well... the call starts out with deep rich tones. Then it quickly rises to a high-pitched squealing sound and immediately drops down to a bunch of grunts.

Let me start with a fundamental observation: most people don't know what they want unless they see it in context. We don't know what kind of racing bike we want—until we see a champ in the Tour de France ratcheting the gears on a particular model. We don't know what kind of speaker system we like—until we hear a set of speakers that sounds better than the previous one. We don't even know what we want to do with our lives—until we find a relative or a friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing. Everything is relative, and that's the point. Like an airplane pilot landing in the dark, we want runway lights on either side of us, guiding us to the place where we can touch down our wheels. In

Initially the driver asked the passengers to stay seated and remain on the bus, but after a half hour of conferring with his supervisors, he informed the passengers that another bus was being sent to their location to take them to Los Angeles. The driver gave them an hour and reiterated that the journey would resume on the new bus at ten thirty, and to please be prompt so they wouldn’t be left behind. He gave them a quick tour-guide style run-down of the available restaurants and sites to see in Primm, including a huge Buffalo shaped pool at Buffalo Bills Hotel, and the roller coaster that Finn was suddenly determined to ride. But when the bus driver mentioned that the bullet riddled car of the infamous outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde, was on display at Whiskey Pete’s Hotel and Casino, he and Bonnie looked at each other in wide-eyed wonder. Finn had started to laugh, almost choking on his disbelief. “Now that, Infinity, is a sign,” Bonnie drawled, and immediately scowled. “William’s sign is still in Bear’s car. I’ve got to get it back. If I only come out of this trip with one souvenir, that’s the one I want. A cardboard sign and a big, blond husband. That’s all I ask.

Libraries were like a second home to me, not really a shocker given my lack of much of a social life, and I’d noticed Augsburg’s library was fantastic, falling in love with it on my campus tour last summer. Big, new and full of books I had never read before, it was tantalizing. City libraries are dicey unless you get into a bigger city, but college libraries are great. They’re full of so much research material, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on all of it. I’d actually been looking forward to searching for more information on my condition now that I had access to a new wealth of information. It had occurred to me sometime in the night that this boy had given me a direction as to where to start. Grabbing a jacket in case the weather

In contrast, Bella Vista was lush and seductive, the landscape filled with colors from deep-green to submerged-gold. Gardeners, construction workers and farm workers swarmed the property. Isabel Johansen was in charge; that had been clear from the start. Yet when she'd shown him to Erik's room, she'd seemed vulnerable, uncertain. Some might regard the room as a mausoleum, filled with the depressing weight of things left behind by the departed. To Mac, it was a treasure trove. He was here to learn the story of this place, this family, and every detail, from the baseball card collection to the dog-eared books about faro places, would turn into clues for him. And holy crap, had Isabel looked different when she'd given him the nickel tour. Unlike the virago in the beekeeper's getup, the cleaned-up Isabel was a Roman goddess in a flowy outfit, sandals and curly dark hair.

When Tess had told him about the book project, she hadn't mentioned hostile women and swarms of bees. In fact, she'd characterized it as a working vacation of sorts, a way for him to recover from his bum knee by soaking up the charms of Sonoma County. In contrast, Bella Vista was lush and seductive, the landscape filled with colors from deep green to sunburned-gold. Gardeners, construction workers swarmed the property. Isabel Johansen was in charge, that had been clear from the start. Yet when she'd shown him to Erik's room, she'd seen vulnerable, uncertain. Some might regard the room as a mausoleum, filled with the depressing weight of things left behind by the departed. To Mac, it was a treasure trove. He was here to learn the story of this place, this family, and every detail, from the baseball card collection to the dog-eared books about far-off places, would turn into clues for him. And holy crap, had Isabel looked different when she'd given him the nickel tour. Unlike the virago in the beekeeper's getup, the cleaned-up Isabel was a Roman goddess in a flowy outfit, sandals and curly dark hair.

Now, let’s focus on one aspect of another female superstar’s greatness that you should bring into your game, or rather into your head; Serena Williams (and Venus too) have serious short-term memory loss. By that I mean when things go bad in a point, game, set, or match, they have this ability to mentally wipe the slate clean—to forget about it immediately and not get ruined. Club players? We miss a few shots and lose a couple of games and it gets in our mind; we lose confidence, get rattled, and dial it down. Believe me, I know. That was me on tour plenty of times. As you’ll read later in Winning Ugly, when you get down on yourself—start beating yourself up mentally—there are now two players on the court trying to take you down. And one of them is you.

Traditional structures of social and economic support slowly weakened; no longer was it possible for a man to follow his father and grandfather into a manufacturing job, or to join the union and start on the union ladder of wages. Marriage was no longer the only socially acceptable way to form intimate partnerships, or to rear children. People moved away from the security of legacy religions or the churches of their parents and grandparents, toward churches that emphasized seeking an identity, or replaced membership with the search for connection or economic success (Wuthnow, 1988). These changes left people with less structure when they came to choose their careers, their religion, and the nature of their family lives. When such choices succeed, they are liberating; when they fail, the individual can only hold himself or herself responsible. In the worst cases of failure, this is a Durkheim-like recipe for suicide. We can see this as a failure to meet early expectations or, more fundamentally, as a loss of the structures that give life a meaning.10 Durkheim,

I think Elvis made it OK to play Vegas,” said Tony Brown, who worked in Vegas with Elvis….’Up until then, you thought of Vegas as schlock kinda stuff. But now, when an artist reaches the legacy level and doesn’t want to do arena tours, they come to Las Vegas. It’s an easier gig: you just come down the elevator and go do the show; the production is over the top better than anything you can take on tour. Elvis started that.

Inside the vault housing Shalmaneser: cool. Waiting for the launch window, which is a decorative way of saying when the GT guide is good and ready to start, this fact has already decided several of the crowd one hundred nine strong (some of whom are tourists some of whom are genuine potential recruits lured by the handouts and TV plugs of the GT Corp. some of whom have seen themselves here so often in the personae of Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere that they couldn’t tell you why they bothered to make the visit in reality and some of whom are GT’s own plantees primed to speak up at the right moments and give the impression of Things Happening) that they aren’t going to be interested in what they’re shown. Cold! In May! Under the Manhattan Fuller Dome! And clad in Nydofoam sneakers, MasQ-Lines, Forlon&Morler skirtlets and dresslets; strung about with Japind Holocams with Biltin g’teed Norisk LazeeLaser monochrome lamps, instreplay SeeyanEar recorders; pocket-heavy with Japind Jettiguns, SeKure Stunnems, Karatands to be slipped on as easily as your grandmother drew on her glove. Uneasy, watching their accidental companions on this guided tour. Well-fed. Shifty-eyed, slipping tranks into their chomp-chomp jaws. Damned good-looking.

The dog account’s popularity spread beyond her family and friends to a few thousand people. But on a Monday night in December 2012, the account started gaining fans around the world. After Toffey posted three pictures of Tuna on the Instagram blog that night, the dog’s following grew from 8,500 to 15,000 within 30 minutes. Dasher pulled to refresh the page: 16,000. By the next morning, Tuna was at 32,000 followers. Dasher’s phone started ringing with media requests from around the world. Anderson Cooper’s talk show offered to fly her to DC; she appeared via webcast, thinking it wouldn’t be feasible to take a vacation day. But as requests for appearances continued to come in, her friends warned her about what was coming before she realized it: she would have to quit her job at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles and run her dog’s account full-time. It sounded ridiculous, so she took a month off to test the theory. Sure enough, BarkBox, which made a subscription box for pet items, was willing to sponsor Dasher and her friend on an eight-city tour with Tuna. People in various cities came up to her, crying, telling her they were struggling with depression or anxiety and that Tuna was bringing them joy. “That was the first time that I realized how much weight these posts had for people,” Dasher later recalled. “And that’s also when I realized I wanted to do this full-time.” Her life became about managing Tuna’s fame. Berkley, part of Penguin Random House, signed her up to write a book titled Tuna Melts My Heart: The Underdog with the Overbite. That led to more brand deals, plus merchandising to put Tuna’s likeness on stuffed animals and mugs. In her book’s acknowledgments, she thanks Tuna most of all, but also Toffey for sharing the post that changed her life. The tastes of one Instagram employee directly affected her financial success, but also the habits of the two million people who now follow that dog—including Ariana Grande.