Tracks Themes And Quotes

Well, I’ve been a musician my whole life. When I was two, I would sing the theme from Star Wars in my crib; my mom taped it for proof. Then, when I was five, I asked for a violin. No one knew why I would want one, but my wish was granted and I ended up a classically trained fiddler by age 12. The only problem with that was, when you’re a classical violinist, everybody expects you to be satisfied with playing Tchaikovsky for the rest of your life, and saying you want to play jazz, rock, write songs, sing your songs, hook up your fiddle to a guitar amp, sleep with your 4-track recorder, mess around with synths, dress like Tinkerbell in combat boots, AND play Tchaikovsky is equivalent to spitting on the Pope.

A coherent text is a designed object: an ordered tree of sections within sections, crisscrossed by arcs that track topics, points, actors, and themes, and held together by connectors that tie one proposition to the next. Like other designed objects, it comes about not by accident but by drafting a blueprint, attending to details, and maintaining a sense of harmony and balance.

You saved me, you should remember me. The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats. Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms. When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling. I remember sounds like that from my childhood, laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful, something like that. Lugano. Tables under the apple trees. Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags. And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water; perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him. Crucial sounds or gestures like a track laid down before the larger themes and then unused, buried. Islands in the distance. My mother holding out a plate of little cakes— as far as I remember, changed in no detail, the moment vivid, intact, having never been exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age hungry for life, utterly confident— By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green pieced into the dark existing ground. Surely spring has been returned to me, this time not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

What lights you up? Inspires you? Energizes you? When do you find yourself losing track of time because you are so absorbed in an activity and can’t wait to get back to it and do it again? What would you love to do even if you didn’t get paid to do it? Fast-forward to your golden years. What might you wish you had done more of? Now take a moment to compare your lists. What common themes do you see in your answers? What words get repeated? What activities keep getting mentioned? What threads are woven consistently throughout your story? Summarize the patterns you see by circling common words or writing a few summary sentences below both lists.

The carciofini were good at the moment, no doubt about it, particularly the romagnolo, a variety of artichoke exclusive to the region, so sweet and tender it could even be eaten raw. Puntarelle, a local bitter chicory, would make a heavenly salad. In the Vini e Olio he found a rare Torre Ercolana, a wine that combined Cabernet and Merlot with the local Cesanese grape. The latter had been paired with the flavors of Roman cuisine for over a thousand years: they went together like an old married couple. There was spring lamb in abundance, and he was able to track down some good abbachio, suckling lamb that had been slaughtered even before it had tasted grass. From opportunities like these, he began to fashion a menu, letting the theme develop in his mind. A Roman meal, yes, but more than that. A springtime feast, in which every morsel spoke of resurgence and renewal, old flavors restated with tenderness and delicacy, just as they had been every spring since time began. He bought a bottle of oil that came from a tiny estate he knew of, a fresh pressing whose green, youthful flavors tasted like a bowl of olives just off the tree. He hesitated before a stall full of fat white asparagus from Bassano del Grappa, on the banks of the fast-flowing river Brenta. It was outrageously expensive, but worth it for such quality, he decided, as the stallholder wrapped a dozen of the pale spears in damp paper and handed it to Bruno with a flourish, like a bouquet of the finest flowers. His theme clarified itself the more he thought about it. It was to be a celebration of youth---youth cut short, youth triumphant, youth that must be seized and celebrated.

Cochise Jones always liked to play against your expectations of a song, to light the gloomy heart of a ballad with a Latin tempo and a sheen of vibrato, root out the hidden mournfulness, the ache of longing, in an up-tempo pop tune. Cochise’s six-minute outing on the opening track of Redbonin’ was a classic exercise in B-3 revisionism, turning a song inside out. It opened with big Gary King playing a fat, choogling bass line, sounding like the funky intro to some ghetto-themed sitcom of the seventies, and then Cochise Jones came in, the first four drawbars pulled all the way out, giving the Lloyd Webber melody a treatment that was not cheery so much as jittery, playing up the anxiety inherent in the song’s title, there being so many thousand possible ways to Love Him, so little time to choose among them. Cochise’s fingers skipped and darted as if the keys of the organ were the wicks of candles and he was trying to light all of them with a single match. Then, as Idris Muhammad settled into a rolling burlesque-hall bump and grind, and King fell into step beside him, Cochise began his vandalism in earnest, snapping off bright bunches of the melody and scattering it in handfuls, packing it with extra notes in giddy runs. He was ruining the song, rifling it, mocking it with an antic edge of joy. You might have thought, some critics felt, that the meaning or spirit of the original song meant no more to Cochise Jones than a poem means to a shark that is eating the poet. But somewhere around the three-minute mark, Cochise began to build, in ragged layers, out of a few repeated notes on top of a left-hand walking blues, a solo at once dense and rudimentary, hammering at it, the organ taking on a raw, vox humana hoarseness, the tune getting bluer and harder and nastier. Inside the perfectly miked Leslie amplifier, the treble horn whirled, and the drivers fired, and you heard the song as the admission of failure it truly was, a confession of ignorance and helplessness. And then in the last measures of the song, without warning, the patented Creed Taylor strings came in, mannered and restrained but not quite tasteful. A hint of syrup, a throb of the pathetic, in the face of which the drums and bass fell silent, so that in the end it was Cochise Jones and some rented violins, half a dozen mournful studio Jews, and then the strings fell silent, too, and it was just Mr. Jones, fading away, ending the track with the startling revelation that the song was an apology, an expression, such as only the blues could ever tender, of limitless regret.

What is the school like? First, let me set the stage. The school enrolls students from the age of 4 up. No one is too old, although most of our students are 19 or younger. The people in the school, no matter what age they are, are each doing what they want to do. Usually that means that some people are doing things with others, who can be of the most various of ages, and some people are doing things alone. Usually it means that most people are doing things not done in most other schools, and some are doing things that are done in other schools with a very unusual intensity and concentration. It more often means that children are teaching adults than that adults are teaching children, but most often people are learning and unconscious that “learning” is taking place. Doing what they choose to do is the common theme; learning is the by-product. It is first and foremost a place where students are free to follow their inner dictates. They are free to do what we all do when we have the time to, and what we all find to be most satisfactory—they play. Play is the most serious pursuit at Sudbury Valley. Some people play at games, and some play at things we who have more traditional educations are more comfortable with—writing or art or mathematics or music. But we are quite clear at Sudbury Valley that it is doing what you want to that counts! We have no curriculum and place no value on one pursuit over another. The reason that we are secure in feeling this way is that we constantly see that people play more and more sophisticated “games,” explore more and more deeply, that they constantly expand their knowledge of the world, and their ability to handle themselves in it. Children who play constantly do not draw an artificial line between work and play. In fact, you could say that they are working constantly if you did not see the joy in the place, a joy most usually identified with the pursuit of avocations. I

Brian Wells recalls, during a day spent with Nick in his bedroom at Far Leys, picking up a guitar and starting to play. Recognizing the riff, Nick took up his saxophone, and for a while the two jammed away on Henry Mancini’s familiar, throbbing ‘Peter Gunn’ theme. ‘I think he was a sensitive guy,’ Brian says. ‘After he’d been in the psychiatric hospital… I was talking about Bryter Layter, and getting him to play it, and talking about tracks on it, because he would show me tunings. This is when he had gone back to Tanworth … and I would go up there just to hang out and have a laugh. And then we’d play tracks off Pink Moon, and I remember saying, God, if I’d made that record and it hadn’t sold, I’d have been very pissed off. And he said: “Well, now you know what’s going on with me.” He actually said that. Which was rare for him, because normally he was very unforthcoming

Anyone comparing photos of Glenn Frey and Don Henley in 1972 and, say, 1977 could track the price of the years of drugs and high living. Julia Phillips's drug addiction incinerated her Hollywood career. Martin Scorsese barely survived his own cocaine addiction in the mid-seventies. Since the days of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, Los Angeles had sold a vision of personal liberation. A decade later, liberation had curdled into license. The theme song for Los Angeles in the buoyant early 1970s could have been "Take It Easy" or "Rock Me on the Water." But by 1976, when the Eagles released Hotel California, the mood of lengthening shadows was more precisely captured by their rueful "Life in the Fast Lane.

Dave and the others walked around the building. The building was surrounded by clumps of bushes and vines grew up its walls, but it looked like it had once had a lovely garden. When they reached the other side of the building, they saw a minecart track. It led from inside the building and then went off across the savanna, disappearing into the distance. The track seemed to lead right up to the huge white walls. The minecart track was twice as wide as they usually were. Suddenly an old music box embedded into one of the walls crackled into life, almost making Dave jump out of his skin. “Welcome to Redstone Land Station!” said a recorded voice. “You’re about to have the most fantastic vacation of your life, enjoying all the fun rides and experiences that our theme park has to offer. Ride on a rollercoaster! Stay at our luxury hotels! Chill out by our swimming pools! Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, why not join one of our tour groups and take a two-day horse ride to Bedrock City? This mysterious city has been abandoned for centuries. What kind of people used to live there? Nobody knows! But what we do know is that our Bedrock City tours are a fantastic deal — only forty emeralds per person, and kids get to go free! And if you’re feeling even more adventurous, you can take one of our tours to the Far Lands. Yes, beyond Bedrock City is one of the four edges of the world, a mysterious place where anything can happen! But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, jump on the train and enjoy the leisurely ride to Redstone Land. The buffet carriage is at the back and is stocked with delicious food and drink! Terms and conditions apply. Redstone Land is not responsible for any injuries or loss of life experienced during one of our Bedrock City or Far Lands tours.” “Okay, that was weird,” said Carl. Suddenly the old music box spluttered into life once more and began to play the same message: “Welcome to Redstone Land Station! You’re about to have the most fantastic — “ WHAM! Carl slammed one of his golem fists into the music box, making it go POOF. A record fell out, and Carl picked it up and flung it across the savanna.

Hunt pushed, “This is a death machine.” “And what is a gun?” Pippa snapped. “Or a sword?” She sneered at the lightning zapping at his fingertips. “What is your magic, angel, but an instrument of death?” Her eyes blazed again. “This suit is simply a variation on a theme.” Ruhn said to Hunt, “So what’s your take on it? Can Ophion use it?” “No one should fucking use it,” Hunt growled. “On either side.” He said to Cormac, “And if you’re smart, you’ll tell Command to track down the scientists behind this and destroy them and their plans. The bloodshed on both sides will become monstrous if you’re all using these things.

We tend to understand our world through labels and through stories. Well, I love a good story. You know that. But... sometimes... I see folks getting themselves all twisted up over stories. I mean the stories we apply to ourselves. The story of our identities. Younger folks, older folks too, get anxious because they feel like their story hasn’t actually begun. That they are in a play and they’ve missed their cues and forgotten their lines. Or, they turn into literary critics of life and criticize their own character, looking for steady growth and rising action. A satisfying plot tying events together. Here’s the thing. Lives aren’t stories. They aren’t written to be tidy or to hang tight to a central theme or conflict. We consume a lot of carefully constructed stories and it can be easy to forget that life is not one of them. You aren’t headed toward a thoughtful climax and, so, you can’t be off track within your own narrative. Life doesn’t work that way. We live and then we don’t. That’s the simple truth of it. Our stories are happening now and if we get preoccupied looking for satisfying character arcs or a steady build toward some conclusion, well we miss what’s here in the moment and we will always fall short of our expectations. We can’t judge ourselves like we judge the protagonist in a book or movie. Life isn’t failing you because it isn’t delivering a cohesive story. You aren’t failing because you haven’t stuck to a clear and explainable hero’s path. Stories are a great way to understand the world, but they are paper thin compared to actual life. You, in contrast, are complicated. Make room for that truth and love yourself in all your messy complexity. (The Cryptonaturalist episode 39: Bittersweet)

Themes like,This year is going to be my year of being creative everyday, will help keep you on track and make you feel like you have achieved something even with the smallest of contributions. 

Commercial and Residential Interior Design Fit Out Dubai, UAE Artefirma has extensive experience and track record in creating themed environments for residential, corporate, and hospitality sectors, with a growing focus on differentiation

You could play ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ as the students arrive, the title theme from Chariots of Fire, the Rocky title track ‘Gonna Fly Now’ or the ‘Theme from Mission: Impossible’ during tough tasks, The Benny Hill Show theme tune when you want them to change activities or the Countdown clock music when you want them to answer spot questions.

The menu: legendary deep-fried Turkeyzilla, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and green beans. The theme: dysfunction. “So,” Elysia said to Lex’s parents with her ever-friendly grin, “how are you?” “How do you think they are?” Ferbus whispered. She kicked him under the table. “I mean—um—what do you do? For a living?” Lex’s mother, who hadn’t said much, continued to stare down the table at the sea of black hoodies while picking at her potatoes. Lex’s father cleared his throat. “I’m a contractor,” he said. “And she’s a teacher.” “Omigod! I wanted to be a teacher!” Elysia turned to Mrs. Bartleby. “Do you love it?” “Hmm?” She snapped back to attention and smiled vacantly at Elysia. “Oh, yes. I do. The kids are a nice distraction.” “From what?” Pip asked. Bang smacked her forehead. Lex squeezed Driggs’s hand even tighter, causing him to choke on his stuffing. He coughed and hacked until the offending morsel flew out of his mouth, landing in Sofi’s glass of water. “Ewww!” she squealed. “Drink around it,” Pandora scolded. “So! I hear New York City is lovely this time of year.” Well, it looks nice, I guess,” Mr. Bartleby said. “But shoveling out the driveway is a pain in the neck. The girls used to help, but now . . .” Sensing the impending awkwardness, Corpp jumped in. “Well, Lex has been a wonderful addition to our community. She’s smart, friendly, a joy to be around—” “And don’t you worry about the boyfriend,” Ferbus said, pointing to Driggs. “I keep him in line.” Mrs. Bartleby’s eyes widened, looking at Lex and then Driggs. “You have a—” she sputtered. “He’s your—” Ferbus went white. “They didn’t know?” “Oops!” said Uncle Mort in a theatrical voice, getting up from the table. “Almost forgot the biscuits!” “Let me help you with those,” Lex said through clenched teeth, following him to the counter. A series of pained hugs and greetings had ensued when her parents arrived—but the rest of the guests showed up so soon thereafter that Lex hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to them, much to her relief. Still, she hadn’t stopped seething. “What were you thinking?” Uncle Mort gave her a reproachful look. “I was thinking that your parents were probably going to feel more lonely and depressed this Thanksgiving than they’ve ever felt in their lives, and that maybe we could help alleviate some of that by hosting a dinner featuring the one and only daughter they have left.” “A dinner of horrors? You know my track record with family gatherings!” He ignored her. “Here we are!” he said, turning back to the table with a giant platter. “Biscuits aplenty!” Lex grunted and took her seat. “I’m not sure how much longer I can do this,” she whispered to Driggs. “Me neither,” he replied. “I think my hand is broken in three places.” “Sorry.” “And your dad seems to be shooting me some sort of a death stare.” Lex glanced at her father. “That’s bad.” “Think he brought the shotgun?” “It’s entirely possible.” “All I’m saying,” Ferbus went on, trying to redeem himself and failing, “is that we all look out for one another here.” Mr. Bartleby looked at him. Ferbus began to sweat. “Because, you know. We all need somebody. Uh, to lean on.” “Stop talking,” Bang signed. Elysia gave Lex’s parents a sympathetic grin. “I think what my idiot partner is trying to say—through the magic of corny song lyrics, for some reason—is that you don’t need to worry about Lex. She’s like a sister to me.” She realized her poor choice of words as a pained look came to Mrs. Bartleby’s face. “Or an especially close cousin.” She shut her mouth and stared at her potatoes. “Frig.” Lex was now crushing Driggs’s hand into a fine paste. Other than the folding chairs creaking and Pip obliviously scraping the last bits of food off his plate, the table was silent. “Good beans!” Pip threw in.

Although I loved horror, I wasn’t writing horror then. And sometime between elementary school and graduate school, my characters had transformed from young Black characters on fantastic and futuristic adventures to white characters having quiet epiphanies. I had wonderful writing teachers in college, but somehow with all of that exposure to “canon,” I had lost track of my own voice and was imitating writers whose stories were nothing like the ones hidden in my heart. I was a young Black woman raised by two civil rights activists—attorney John Due and Patricia Stephens Due—and I had grown up in the newly integrated suburbs of Miami-Dade County. I had never seen my life reflected in fiction; I felt like an imposter when I tried to write Black rural or city characters. I often wish I had discovered the writing of Octavia E. Butler sooner, but I had not. Representation matters. Without the work of other authors writing in a similar vein, I had lost sight of myself entirely. Then I discovered Mama Day by Gloria Naylor—finally, a book by a highly respected Black woman writer with metaphysical themes! Mama Day helped nudge me past my fear that I could not be a respected writer, especially as a Black writer, if I wrote about the supernatural. During this time, I also interviewed Anne Rice for my newspaper, since she was scheduled to appear at the Miami Book Fair International. I read one of the novels in her Vampire Chronicles series to prepare, and I also found an article about her in a highly respected magazine suggesting that she was wasting her talents writing about vampires. My worst fear realized! During that telephone interview, I asked Rice how she responded to criticism like this and then listened carefully for her answer—not for my readers, but for me. Rice actually laughed. “That used to bother me,” she said, “but my books are taught in universities.” Then she explained that by writing about the supernatural, she was liberated to discuss big themes like life, death, and love. Touché. Between Hurricane Andrew, Mama Day, and Anne Rice’s (unwitting) advice, I wrote The Between in nine months, looking past my own fears as a writer to follow my true passions. My protagonist, Hilton James, is a Black man who lives in the suburbs. His family reminded me of my own.

Screenplay is a company that provides music videos to businesses. Music and video screens are such common attractions in city businesses that court sexual minorities that many of them subscribe to this service. Via disc-based or direct-to-system download, Screenplay subscribers pay for access to a service called “VJ Pro,” where they choose from different genres of music videos that loosely resemble radio formats: HitsVision, a Top 40 mix that promises subscribers “nothing but the hits from every source”; DanceVision, featuring “exclusive remixes, hard to find imports and popular mainstream hits and everything in between designed expressly for the fast paced dance environment”; UrbanVision, a rhythm and blues/hip-hop hybrid that purports “to be all inclusive”; RockVision, rock music featuring songs “from Classic . . . to Disco, New Wave to Old School”; CountryVision, “an upbeat mix of current hits and classic favorites”; and LatinVision, “designed specifically for the sophisticated Latin dance crowd that demands only the hottest and best in tropical, Caribbean, merengue dance and Latin pop.”48 Many gay bars subscribe to ClubVision, which features a mix of “techno, trance and euro-flavored . . . tracks.”49 For dance-themed bars, this subscription features “an extended autoplay feature and individual chapter stops for single track selection.

What puts this film over the top, and cements it as a classic, is the soundtrack by Queen. Yep, THE MF’n Queen. It includes the badass track, “Princes of the Universe,” also the theme for the ’90s Highlander TV series, which was actually pretty good.

Data sources All these components give you feedback and insight into how best to configure your campaigns, although the data sources are often spread around in different places and sometimes difficult to find and interpret. Campaign types Search & Partner Dynamic Search Display Network Remarketing & Dynamic Remarketing Google Shopping for eCommerce Google Merchant Center Data feeds Google Shopping Campaigns Device selection PC / Tablets Mobiles & Smartphones Location Targets & Exclusions Country Metro State City Custom and Radius Daily Budgets Manual CPC Enhanced CPC Flexible Bidding strategies Conversion Optimizer (CPA) Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) Conversion Tracking Setup and configuration Transaction-Specific Conversion Tracking Offline Conversion import Phone call tracking - website call conversions Conversion Rates Conversion Costs Conversion Values Ad Groups Default Bids Keyword Themes Ads Ad Messaging & Demographics Creative Text & Formatting Images* Display Ad Builder* Ad Preview and Diagnosis Account, Campaign and Ad Group Ad Extensions Sitelinks Locations Calls Reviews Apps Callouts Ad Rotation & Frequency Capping Rotate Optimise for Clicks Optimise for Conversions Keywords Bids Broad Modified Broad Phrase Exact Destination urls Keyword Diagnosis User Search Queries Keyword Opportunities Negative Keywords & Match Types Shared Library Shared Budgets* Automated Rules Flexible Bid Strategies Audiences & Exclusions* Campaign Negative Keywords Display Campaign Placement Exclusions* NEW! Business Data and Ad Customizers Advanced Delivery Methods Standard Accelerated Impression Share Lost IS (Budget) Lost IS (Rank) Search Funnels Assisted Impressions & Clicks Assisted Conversions Segmentation Analysis Device performance Network performance Top vs Other position performance Dimension Analysis Days & Times Shopping Geographic User Locations & Distance Search Terms Automatic Placements* Call Details (Call Extensions) Tools Change history Keyword Planner* Display Planner* Opportunities* Scheduling & Day Parting Automated Rules Competitor Ad Auction Insights Reporting* AdWords Campaign Experiments* Browser Languages* *indicates an item not covered in this version of the book

In one study, psychologists tracked unique accomplishments in American children’s stories from 1800 to 1950. After original achievement themes in American children’s books rose by 66 percent from 1810 to 1850, the patent rate shot up sevenfold from 1850 to 1890.

As they got closer, Dave saw that the outside of the walls was surrounded by a huge moat. The train was heading towards a bridge leading across the moat, but as far as Dave could see, there was no hole for the train to pass through. “Is this train just going to crash into those walls?” said Carl, peering out of one of the broken windows. “Which idiot designed this thing?” They sped across the moat, and Dave had a brief glimpse of a deep pit with water at the bottom of it. They were rushing straight towards the quartz walls, and in a few seconds, they would smash into them. “Everyone, brace yourselves!” Dave shouted. They all held on tightly to the seats as the train sped forward, but the crash never happened. Instead, a pair of large quartz doors opened, allowing the train to pass through. The next thing they knew, they were inside the theme park, still speeding along the train track. Dave caught glimpses of rides and shops and buildings as they zoomed forward, going deeper and deeper into the park. “Robot idiot, why isn’t the train stopping?” Carl demanded. “We’re inside the theme park now.” “When you say ‘robot idiot’, are you referring to me?” the friendly voice on the speakers asked. “Yes,” said Carl. “You’re a robot, and you’re an idiot, so I’m calling you a robot idiot.

Love lies at the beating heart of 'Forgive' and it’s central to the whole idea of forgiveness. If you look at how the overall message unfolds, chapter after chapter, page after page, line after line, you may see a common theme and a common vision of Forgiveness and Love walking down the narrow path of life together, holding hands with smiles on their faces and hope in their hearts. This is what Love, Marriage, Relationship looks like for many couples and soul mates as they set out on the exciting journey of being together and sharing everything that life has to offer. As years pass, and when the gloss maybe wears off a bit and the inevitable challenges occur, it’s Love – the depth and purity of true, unchangeable and indefatigable Love - that acts as the glue to keep relationships together, and the wheels of marriage, or loving de facto relationship, on the track.

if you are consistently afraid of groups, perhaps you are either too ambitious and want to save everyone, or think that you must be managing the situations at hand. In this case, it may be helpful to remember that if you want to do too much, you will have to depend on using your own power, and that dependence will exhaust you and make you uncertain. We do not need leaders who can change the world because of their personal power, because change is inherent in people and nature. Our communities, however, need our essential selves and our awareness, not our power, to notice and track such changes. Our world needs our awareness of the roles, themes, and feelings we experience. Insecurity occurs if we push to succeed. Let nature help with the work. We do not need more of the standard kind of leaders, but instead are looking for sensitive facilitators with moment-to-moment awareness.

Under the name The Waterson Family, they made their recording debut for Topic, one of four upcoming acts on the showcase compilation Folk-Sound of Britain (1965). Dispensing with guitars and banjos, they hollered unadorned close harmonies into a stark, chapel-like hush. The consensus was that they ‘sounded traditional’, but in a way no other folk singers did at the time. It was the result of pure intuition: there was no calculation in their art. When Bert Lloyd once commented joyfully on their mixolydian harmonies, they had to resort to a dictionary. Later in 1965 the quartet gathered around the microphone set up in the Camden Town flat of Topic producer Bill Leader and exhaled the extraordinary sequence of songs known as Frost and Fire. In his capacity as an artistic director of Topic, Lloyd curated the album’s contents. Focusing on the theme of death, ritual sacrifice and resurrection, he subtitled it A Calendar of Ritual and Magical Songs. The fourteen tracks are divided by calendrical seasons, and the four Watersons begin and end the album as midwinter wassailers, a custom popularised in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as groups of singers – ‘waits’ – made the rounds of the towns and villages, proffering a decorated bowl of spiced ale or wine and asking – in the form of a song, or ‘wassail’ – for a charitable donation. Midwinter comes shortly before the time of the first ploughing in preparation for the sowing of that year’s new crop, and the waits’ money, or food and drink, can be considered a form of benign sacrifice against the success of the next growth and harvest. The wassail-bowl’s rounds were often associated with the singing of Christmas carols.

Paulo Coelho Oprah: One of the running themes throughout The Alchemist is one of my favorite all-time quotes. And that is, “When you want something, all the Universe conspires in helping you to get it.” I think that’s what actually conspired in helping me be here today. I’ve been trying to do this interview for ten years. But where did that idea, those words, that theme, come from? Paulo Coelho: Well, what I experienced in my life is that when I really wanted something, I always got it. Positive and negative. Because the Universe does not think. You have this subconscious mind that sometimes is attracting tragedy. Attracting bad things, you know? Because you want to be a victim. Because to be a victim is to justify a lot of frustrations and failures in your life. The Universe is helping you. You want to be successful. The Universe is helping you. Oprah: Based on how you think, how you truly think, consciously and subconsciously. Do you believe every person has what you call a personal legend? Paulo: I’m 100 percent convinced. Which is totally different than I believe that every person is going to fulfil his or her personal legend. All right? Oprah: Okay. I would agree. Every person has a personal legend. First of all, what is a personal legend? Paulo: It is the reason that you are here. It’s as simple as this. You know? You are here to honor something called the miracle of life. You can be here to fulfil your hours and days with something that is meaningless. But you know that you have a reason to be here. It is the only thing that gives you enthusiasm. And you know when you are betraying your personal legend, when you are doing something without enthusiasm. And, worse, you know that you have this good excuse. I’m not ready. Which is just an excuse. You know? No, I’m not ready. I have to wait for the right moment. You know, now I have to feed my family. Come on. Your family wants to see you happy. Your daughter. Your husband. Your wife. They don’t want to see you there sitting in a work that you hate. Even if it gives you tons of money. Oprah: Okay. So you’ve just given a really key clue to how to know you’re pursuing your personal legend. It is that which in life gives you enthusiasm. You call it personal legend. I call it personal calling. Everybody has a reason why you’re here. You’re called here. And you know if you’re on the path to it whether you’re enthusiastic about it or not. That’s how you know. Paulo: One hundred percent. We know our reason to be here. We don’t know if we are taking the right steps towards it. But if we are honest enough, God is going to guide you. Even if you take some wrong steps, you know? God will recognize that you have a pure heart. And He puts you back on track. Oprah: Because Life rises up to meet you. Paulo: Absolutely.

Here we are, sir,’ Blake said as we rolled onto the bumpy track that constituted the airport car park. It all felt oddly familiar, the chauffeur-driven car, the dark-haired brooding male, the name check of sir. And as the aeroplane came into view, I suddenly understood why it all felt so familiar. Oh, fuck. Drew was Christian Grey…but far less controlling. This felt surreal. I was expecting to hear the first bars of ‘Love Me Like You Do’ blaring out at any second. ‘Trust me?’ Drew asked as he opened my door. ‘Are you taking me to your playroom?’ I asked biting my lip for good measure. He raised his eyebrow in question. ‘Drew, you couldn’t be more Christian Grey!’ ‘I’m pretty sure he had a helicopter,’ he replied smiling. ‘He does, but we’ll let that slip.’ ‘Absolutely not,’ he replied. ‘Real romance heroes fly fucking planes.

Commit to Priorities Set the appropriate cadence for your OKR cycle. I recommend dual tracking, with quarterly OKRs (for shorter-term goals) and annual OKRs (keyed to longer-term strategies) deployed in parallel. To work out implementation kinks and strengthen leaders’ commitment, phase in your rollout of OKRs with upper management first. Allow the process to gain momentum before enlisting individual contributors to join in. Designate an OKR shepherd to make sure that every individual devotes the time each cycle to choosing what matters most. Commit to three to five top objectives—what you need to achieve—per cycle. Too many OKRs dilute and scatter people’s efforts. Expand your effective capacity by deciding what not to do, and discard, defer, or deemphasize accordingly. In choosing OKRs, look for objectives with the most leverage for outstanding performance. Find the raw material for top-line OKRs in the organization’s mission statement, strategic plan, or a broad theme chosen by leadership. To emphasize a departmental objective and enlist lateral support, elevate it to a company OKR.

Atonement does not always directly help the one we have sinned against. It does not always help anyone at all. Had Boromir run of with Aragorn, he could have been of greater help in tracking the orcs after Merry and Pippin were captured than he was in giving his life to defend them.

Welcome to the Blackcastle Book Club’s official group chat!” “Seriously? You put a picture from The Land Before Time as the group’s profile picture?” “Why not? It’s a good movie.” “Dude, that’s so wrong. It’s a children’s film, and we’re reading about dinosaurs boning.” “It’s a good thing we’re not making them read the books, isn’t it? But fine, I see your point. I wanted to keep it a surprise, but since you insist on policing my admin decisions, I’ve changed the picture to the cover of this month’s book club pick. Gentlemen, prepare yourselves for **drumroll please** Shagging the Spinosaurus!” “We already guessed that was the book of the month. We saw you reading it the other day Aren’t you supposed to read it with the rest of the club? Why are you reading it early?” “Yeah, that’s CHEATING.” “It’s called vetting. Also, I’m the admin. I can do what I want.” “I tried looking for it at the bookstore yesterday and couldn’t find it. Donovan, what was the name of the store you went to?” “Uh… I don’t remember. Just some shop I stumbled on in the city. I’m sure you can buy the book online.” “I don’t understand. How do you shag a spinosaurus?” “The same way you shag a triceratops and a T-rex, genius.” “Oh, you sound so bloody confident. Are you speaking from experience?” “Gentlemen, let’s get back on track! This is a book club, not a fight club. Our first official meeting is on Wednesday. I want everyone to come prepared with at least one discussion question.” “Dibs on the ‘how do you shag a spinosaurus’ question.” “You can’t ask that. It has to be a THOUGHTFUL question.” “How thoughtful do you want us to be? We’re literally reading about dinosaurs fucking.” “And humans If you forget them, that’s human erasure.” “Fuck off, Donovan.” “Spoken like someone who doesn’t have the IQ to come up with a good question.” “Yeah? Let’s wait until Wednesday and see. I bet my question will be better than yours.” “You’re on. May the better questioner win.” “Okayyy. Moving on. Noah, since you refuse to participate in the LITERARY side of our club, you’re in charge of snacks.” “Fine.” “I’m thinking we could do a themed event with dinosaur crackers. Do you think they make custom spinosaurus ones?” “So we’re going to eat the little dude while we read about him getting it on? That’s so wrong.” “Poor Spiny. He deserves better.” “It was an IDEA. I don’t see you guys coming up with anything better.” “How about jungle juice to stay with the dinosaur theme?” “Dinosaurs didn’t live in the jungle.” “How do you know? Were you there?” “Lol.” “Don’t talk to your captain like that.” “You’re our football captain. You’re not the president of this book club. Also, I just looked it up and they did live in jungles, so you’re wrong.” “Wait, we have a president?” “Yes, it’s me. Anyway Noah, can you call the dinosaur cracker company and ask them for custom spinosaurus snacks? Hello? Noah?” Noah Wilson left the conversation.

Netanyahu also published an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times declaring, “No grievance, real or imagined, can ever justify terror … American power topples the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and the al-Qaida network there crumbles on its own. The United States must now act similarly against the other terror regimes—Iran, Iraq, Yasser Arafat’s dictatorship, Syria, and a few others.”44 His successor, Ehud Barak, repeated this theme in an op-ed in the Times of London, declaring, “The world’s governments know exactly who the terrorists are and exactly which rogue states support and promote their activity. Countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and North Korea have a proven track-record of sponsoring terrorism, while no one needs reminding of the carnage wrought by the terrorist thugs of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and even Yassir Arafat’s own PLO.”45