Treat Each Other Well Quotes

Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ, and yet grasp each other's hands as friends. It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and despise each other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or the trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other seems beyond the comprehension of man; and yet in all countries where Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us? Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is—not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends even, but that they treat those who differ from them, with simple fairness. We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish Christians to so act that we will not have to forgive them. If all will admit that all have an equal right to think, then the question is forever solved; but as long as organized and powerful churches, pretending to hold the keys of heaven and hell, denounce every person as an outcast and criminal who thinks for himself and denies their authority, the world will be filled with hatred and suffering. To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.

The deep human instinct to come together in crisis. To take care of each other. In its best light, it was what made humanity human. But he also had the dark suspicion that it was a kind of bargaining. Look, universe, see how kind and gentle and nice I am? Don’t let the hammer fall on me. Even if it was only grief and fear, he’d take it. Anything that helped them all treat each other well.

We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know God's plan for us. What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and love, and joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings.

I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as "common decency". I treated somebody well for a little while, or even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in return. Love need not have anything to do with it. (...) Love is where you find it. I think it is foolosh to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency".

If we believe most people can't be trusted, that's how we'll treat each other, to everyone's detriment. Few ideas have as much power to shape the world as our view of other people. Because ultimately, you get what you expect to get.

David Foster Wallace: I think the reason why people behave in an ugly manner is that it’s really scary to be alive and to be human, and people are really really afraid. And that the reasons… That the fear is the basic condition, and there are all kinds of reasons for why we’re so afraid. But the fact of the matter is, is that, is that the job that we’re here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we’re not terrified all the time. And not in a position of using all kinds of different things, and using people to keep that kind of terror at bay. That is my personal opinion. Well for me, as an American male, the face I’d put on the terror is the dawning realization that nothing’s enough, you know? That no pleasure is enough, that no achievement is enough. That there’s a kind of queer dissatisfaction or emptiness at the core of the self that is unassuageable by outside stuff. And my guess is that that’s been what’s going on, ever since people were hitting each other over the head with clubs. Though describable in a number of different words and cultural argots. And that our particular challenge is that there’s never been more and better stuff comin’ from the outside, that seems temporarily to sort of fill the hole or drown out the hole. Personally, I believe that if it’s assuageable in any way it’s by internal means. And I don’t know what that means. I think it’s fine in some way. I think it’s probably assuageable by internal means. I think those internal means have to be earned and developed, and it has something to do with, um, um, the pop-psych phrase is lovin’ yourself. It’s more like, if you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do this.

Outside of my professional life, I have known many couples over the years who had passion and electricity between them and who treated each other well. But unfortunately there is wide acceptance in our society of the unhealthy notion that passion and aggression are interwoven and that cruel verbal exchanges and bomblike explosions are the price you pay for a relationship that is exciting, deep, and sexy. Popular romantic movies and soap operas sometimes reinforce this image.

All this kind of relationship amounts to is the well‑oiled relationship between two persons who remain strangers all their lives, who never arrive at a “central relationship,” but who treat each other with courtesy and who attempt to make each other feel better.

Every Greek, man, woman, and child, has to two Greeks inside. We even have technical terms for them. They are a part of us, as inevitable as the fact that we all write poetry and the fact that every single one of us thinks that he knows everything that there is to know. We are all hospitable to strangers, we all are nostalgic for something, our mothers all treat their grown sons like babies, our sons all treat their mothers a sacred and beat their wives, we all hate solitude, we all try to find out from a stranger whether or not we are related, we all use every long word we know as often as we possibly can, we all go out for a walk in the evening so that we can look over each others' fences, we all think that we are equal to the best. Do you understand?" The captain was perplexed, "You didn't tell me about the two Greeks inside every Greek." "I didn't? Well, I must have wandered off the point.

It is back to basics here,’ Jason said. ‘What women seek to find in a man is dictated by evolution and the role of the man as a hunter gatherer. Women want a bad boy who will treat them well but not so well that they will have nothing to bitch about to their female friends. Bitching about the male of the species is how females bond with each other…another one of evolutions little jokes.

What did our mothers teach us? Treat others as you want to be treated. Excellent advice and very well intentioned. And it works, too—as long as everyone is just like you.

As soon as teenage girls start to profess love for something, everyone else becomes totally dismissive of it. Teenage girls are open season for the cruelest bullying that our society can dream up. Everyone's vicious to them. They're vicious to each other. Hell, they're even vicious to themselves. It's terrible. So if teenage girls have something that they love, isn't that a good thing? Isn't it better for them to find some words they believe in, words like the 'fire-proof and fearless' lyrics that Jacqui wrote? Isn't it better for them to put those words on their arm in a tattoo than for them to cut gashes in that same skin? Shouldn't we be grateful when teenage girls love our work? Shouldn't that be a fucking honor? It's used as the cheapest, easiest test of crap, isn't it? If teenage girls love a movie, a book, a band, then it's immediately classified as mediocre shit. Well, I'm not going to stand for that. Someone needs to treat them like they're precious, and if nobody else is ready to step up, I guess it's up to us to put them on the path to recognizing that about themselves.

Genetically speaking, we are one people. The two most seemingly different people in the world are virtually identical from the point of their genes.φ At most, about one in a thousand nucleotides in our DNA are different between the blackest and the whitest, the tallest and the shortest of us. We are 99.9 percent the same. We are one tribe, one family, but have yet to recognize it. We humans are all intimately interconnected. How we treat each other matters to the health and well-being, perhaps even the survival, of us all as a species, not in some vague future, but in this very moment.

We can't act cruelly toward others without also being negatively affected by our actions. We really are all connected, deeper than we know. If we can't be kinder to each other simply because it's the compassionate and loving way to be, the less remember that when we hurt others, we hurt ourselves, too. Every single time. Just one more reason to treat each other well.

The sentiment behind the golden rule is great (treating others the way we wish to be treated ourselves). But nowadays we don’t even treat ourselves very well! We knowingly consume things that are bad for us, continue working at jobs we hate, and don’t spend half as much time relaxing as we do stressing. Come to think of it, we ARE treating others the way we treat ourselves: poorly! We feed our children junk food, opt for cheap instead of quality even when it matters, rarely give anyone our undivided attention, and demand a lot more from others than what is reasonable or even possible. Let’s try something new: let’s treat everybody as if we just found out they’re about to die. Why? Because it seems that’s the ONLY time we slow down enough to get a new perspective on life—either then or when we have a near-death experience ourselves. Be gentle, patient, kind and understanding. We’re all headed in the same direction, so let’s start treating each other better along the way!

Outside of my professional life, I have known many couples over the years who had passion and electricity between them and who treated each other well. But unfortunately there is wide acceptance in our society of the unhealthy notion that passion and aggression are interwoven and that cruel verbal exchanges and bomblike explosions are the price you pay for a relationship that is exciting, deep, and sexy. Popular romantic movies and soap operas sometimes reinforce this image. Most

In times of old when I was new And Hogwarts barely started The founders of our noble school Thought never to be parted: United by a common goal, They had the selfsame yearning, To make the world’s best magic school And pass along their learning. “Together we will build and teach!” The four good friends decided And never did they dream that they Might someday be divided, For were there such friends anywhere As Slytherin and Gryffindor? Unless it was the second pair Of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw? So how could it have gone so wrong? How could such friendships fail? Why, I was there and so can tell The whole sad, sorry tale. Said Slytherin, “We’ll teach just those Whose ancestry is purest.” Said Ravenclaw, “We’ll teach those whose Intelligence is surest.” Said Gryffindor, “We’ll teach all those With brave deeds to their name.” Said Hufflepuff, “I’ll teach the lot, And treat them just the same.” These differences caused little strife When first they came to light, For each of the four founders had A House in which they might Take only those they wanted, so, For instance, Slytherin Took only pure-blood wizards Of great cunning, just like him, And only those of sharpest mind Were taught by Ravenclaw While the bravest and the boldest Went to daring Gryffindor. Good Hufflepuff, she took the rest, And taught them all she knew, Thus the Houses and their founders Retained friendships firm and true. So Hogwarts worked in harmony For several happy years, But then discord crept among us Feeding on our faults and fears. The Houses that, like pillars four, Had once held up our school, Now turned upon each other and, Divided, sought to rule. And for a while it seemed the school Must meet an early end, What with dueling and with fighting And the clash of friend on friend And at last there came a morning When old Slytherin departed And though the fighting then died out He left us quite downhearted. And never since the founders four Were whittled down to three Have the Houses been united As they once were meant to be. And now the Sorting Hat is here And you all know the score: I sort you into Houses Because that is what I’m for, But this year I’ll go further, Listen closely to my song: Though condemned I am to split you Still I worry that it’s wrong, Though I must fulfill my duty And must quarter every year Still I wonder whether Sorting May not bring the end I fear. Oh, know the perils, read the signs, The warning history shows, For our Hogwarts is in danger From external, deadly foes And we must unite inside her Or we’ll crumble from within. I have told you, I have warned you. . . . Let the Sorting now begin. The hat became motionless once more;

Stop it, Barry,” Joanie said. “Get ahold of yourself. This is just how we work.” I agreed. When she told Shelley I was useless, I heard the smile in her voice and knew she was pretending to be irritated. Really, she wouldn’t know what to do without my uselessness, just as I wouldn’t know what to do without her complaints. I take it back. It’s not that we don’t treat each other well; it’s just that we’re comfortable enough to know that sarcasm and aloofness keep us afloat, and we never have to watch where we step. “You are both so cold,” Barry said that night.

Now it might be suggested that cloning is sometimes worse because, where it is done for the sake of the person cloned, it is also an act of narcissism. The being cloned wants a physical replica of himself. Thus the clone is treated as a means to the narcissistic ends of the person cloned. Now there might indeed be some people who will wish to have themselves cloned for narcissistic reasons, but others may want to be cloned for other reasons (perhaps because it is their only or best chance of reproducing). Moreover, the argument from narcissism assumes that ordinary reproduction is not narcissistic. But why should we think that that is always the case? There could well be something self-adulating in the desire to produce offspring. Those who adopt children or do not have children at all could advance the narcissistic objection against non-clonal reproduction with as much (or as little) force as non-clonal reproducers do in criticizing cloning. They could argue that it is narcissistic for a couple to want to create a child in their combined image, from a mixture of their genes. The point is that both cloning and usual methods of reproduction may be narcissistic, but neither is it the case that each kind of reproduction must necessarily be characterized in this way.

Capitalism is a bad idea. Imagine if we start a society on an uninhabited tropical island, and I propose that the people who do all the work will be paid as little as possible while the people who don’t do anything but own stocks will have more money than they could possibly spend in their lifetimes. You would all be looking at each other and shaking your heads. “Wait, wait, hear me out,” I might say. “We’ll also treat air, water, plants, minerals, and other animals as objects to be exploited even more ruthlessly than workers!” Now you’d slowly back away because there’s obviously something not right with me, even as I continue on: “Wait, don’t go! We can maintain peace by creating massively destructive weapons and violent prisons. Why is everybody leaving?

Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, recently warned that we may be facing a future in which many of our miracle drugs no longer work. She stated, “A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill.”147 We may soon be past the age of miracles. The director-general’s prescription to avoid this catastrophe included a global call to “restrict the use of antibiotics in food production to therapeutic purposes.” In other words, only use antibiotics in agriculture to treat sick animals. But that isn’t happening. In the United States, meat producers feed millions of pounds of antibiotics each year to farm animals just to promote growth or prevent disease in the often cramped, stressful, and unhygienic conditions of industrial animal agriculture. Yes, physicians overprescribe antibiotics as well, but the FDA estimates that 80 percent of the antimicrobial drugs sold in the United States every year now go to the meat industry.

If we believe most people can’t be trusted, that’s how we’ll treat each other, to everyone’s detriment. Few ideas have as much power to shape the world as our view of other people.

NEGLECT AND YOU WILL BE NEGLECTED There are three people you will be judged heavily on how you treat them in this lifetime. For the man, it is his mother for giving him life, his wife for showing him life, and his daughter for teaching her all that he has learned from life. For the woman, it is her father for giving her the seed of life, her husband for showing her life, and her son for teaching him all that she has learned from life. How a person treats their parents is how they show their gratefulness to the Creator for life. How a husband and wife treat each other, is how they show the Creator how well they do with this gift of life, how well they value and honor the sacred oath they made before him, and how well they understand the Lord and his religion, LOVE. A father must be good to his wife and daughter, because from watching this treatment — the son will learn how to treat all women, and his daughter will know what a good man is supposed to act like. And a mother must always remain morally good and faithful to her husband, be attentive to all her children, and be filled with patience, forgiveness, kind words, compassion and love — so her children are raised to respect all mothers, and know what a good woman is supposed to act like. If you neglect your fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives, then don't be surprised when the Creator is forced to neglect you. Neglect, and you will be neglected. Protect, and you will be protected. Reject, and you will be rejected. Love all, and all that love will be mirrored by the Creator — and reflected back onto YOU.

I know people who read interminably, book after book, from page to page, and yet I should not call them 'well-read people'. Of course they 'know' an immense amount; but their brain seems incapable of assorting and classifying the material which they have gathered from books. They have not the faculty of distinguishing between what is useful and useless in a book; so that they may retain the former in their minds and if possible skip over the latter while reading it, if that be not possible, then--when once read--throw it overboard as useless ballast. Reading is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses. Thus each one procures for himself the implements and materials necessary for the fulfilment of his calling in life, no matter whether this be the elementary task of earning one's daily bread or a calling that responds to higher human aspirations. Such is the first purpose of reading. And the second purpose is to give a general knowledge of the world in which we live. In both cases, however, the material which one has acquired through reading must not be stored up in the memory on a plan that corresponds to the successive chapters of the book; but each little piece of knowledge thus gained must be treated as if it were a little stone to be inserted into a mosaic, so that it finds its proper place among all the other pieces and particles that help to form a general world-picture in the brain of the reader. Otherwise only a confused jumble of chaotic notions will result from all this reading. That jumble is not merely useless, but it also tends to make the unfortunate possessor of it conceited. For he seriously considers himself a well-educated person and thinks that he understands something of life. He believes that he has acquired knowledge, whereas the truth is that every increase in such 'knowledge' draws him more and more away from real life, until he finally ends up in some sanatorium or takes to politics and becomes a parliamentary deputy. Such a person never succeeds in turning his knowledge to practical account when the opportune moment arrives; for his mental equipment is not ordered with a view to meeting the demands of everyday life. His knowledge is stored in his brain as a literal transcript of the books he has read and the order of succession in which he has read them. And if Fate should one day call upon him to use some of his book-knowledge for certain practical ends in life that very call will have to name the book and give the number of the page; for the poor noodle himself would never be able to find the spot where he gathered the information now called for. But if the page is not mentioned at the critical moment the widely-read intellectual will find himself in a state of hopeless embarrassment. In a high state of agitation he searches for analogous cases and it is almost a dead certainty that he will finally deliver the wrong prescription.

The breakdown of the neighborhoods also meant the end of what was essentially an extended family....With the breakdown of the extended family, too much pressure was put on the single family. Mom had no one to stay with Granny, who couldn't be depended on to set the house on fire while Mom was off grocery shopping. The people in the neighborhood weren't there to keep an idle eye out for the fourteen-year-old kid who was the local idiot, and treated with affection as well as tormented....So we came up with the idea of putting everybody in separate places. We lock them up in prisons, mental hospitals, geriatric housing projects, old-age homes, nursery schools, cheap suburbs that keep women and the kids of f the streets, expensive suburbs where everybody has their own yard and a front lawn that is tended by a gardener so all the front lawns look alike and nobody uses them anyway....the faster we lock them up, the higher up goes the crime rate, the suicide rate, the rate of mental breakdown. The way it's going, there'll be more of them than us pretty soon. Then you'll have to start asking questions about the percentage of the population that's not locked up, those that claim that the other fifty-five per cent is crazy, criminal, or senile. WE have to find some other way....So I started imagining....Suppose we built houses in a circle, or a square, or whatever, connected houses of varying sizes, but beautiful, simple. And outside, behind the houses, all the space usually given over to front and back lawns, would be common too. And there could be vegetable gardens, and fields and woods for the kids to play in. There's be problems about somebody picking the tomatoes somebody else planted, or the roses, or the kids trampling through the pea patch, but the fifty groups or individuals who lived in the houses would have complete charge and complete responsibility for what went on in their little enclave. At the other side of the houses, facing the, would be a little community center. It would have a community laundry -- why does everybody have to own a washing machine?-- and some playrooms and a little cafe and a communal kitchen. The cafe would be an outdoor one, with sliding glass panels to close it in in winter, like the ones in Paris. This wouldn't be a full commune: everybody would have their own way of earning a living, everybody would retain their own income, and the dwellings would be priced according to size. Each would have a little kitchen, in case people wanted to eat alone, a good-sized living space, but not enormous, because the community center would be there. Maybe the community center would be beautiful, lush even. With playrooms for the kids and the adults, and sitting rooms with books. But everyone in the community, from the smallest walking child, would have a job in it.

If you were you ask ten couples how they got engaged, each of them would have a different story. If you asked ten Christians how they came to know Christ, they would have different stories as well. God treats us as individuals. He knows what makes our hearts sing. He knows our love language. Jesus orchestrates His “proposal” moment with us and knows what it takes to woo us. He desires for us to rise up and leave all other pursuers. He wants us to be His alone, knowing that one day He will return when all is ready for the wedding. He will call to us to come away and be with Him forever. Until that day, we can live with unwavering confidence, knowing that we are promise to Him. We are spoken for.

My dad says that if you love people and they love you back, and you’re happy for each other when things are good and help each other when things are bad, and you don’t even mind too much when people in-ev-it-a-bly—” she sounded out the word “—try to grind your gears, then it’s family. He says if you’re related to someone and they don’t treat you well, they don’t deserve to be called family, and you can meet someone as a total stranger and they can become the best family.

We don’t treat each other very well, I suppose. Even from the start. It was as though we had the seven-year itch the day we met. The day she went into a coma, I heard her telling her friend Shelley that I was useless, that I leave my socks hanging on every doorknob in the house. At weddings we roll our eyes at the burgeoning love around us, the vows that we know will morph into new kinds of promises: I vow not to kiss you when you’re trying to read. I will tolerate you in sickness and ignore you in health. I promise to let you watch that stupid news show about celebrities, since you’re so disenchanted with your own life. Joanie and I were urged by her brother, Barry, to subject ourselves to counseling as a decent couple would. Barry is a man of the couch, a believer in weekly therapy, affirmations, and pulse points. Once he tried to show us exercises he’d been doing in session with his girlfriend. We were instructed to trade reasons, abstract or specific, why we stayed with each other. I started off by saying that Joanie would get drunk and pretend I was someone else and do this neat thing with her tongue. Joanie said tax breaks. Barry cried. Openly. His second wife had recently left him for someone who understood that a man didn’t do volunteer work.

Never coming back here, she thought. With a groan, she levered herself into a sitting position and discovered a painful crick in her neck. Never ever. She launched herself off the bed and limped over to the door and put here eye to the viewer, was treated to a fish-eye view of a small, dapper, well-dressed man holding a bunch of white roses. Okay. Man with flowers. Carey looked around the room. The windows opened on short tethers so guests couldn't throw furniture or each other out into the street, and she was too high to jump anyway. She looked around the room again, looking for possible weapons. There was a rickety-looking chair by the desk in the corner, but it would probably fall to bits even before she hit anyone with it. She looked through the viewer. The little man knocked again. Not urgently, not in an official we-have-come-to-take-you-to-the-gulag kind of way, but in the manner of a gentleman visiting his lady friend with a nice bunch of roses.

When I stopped viewing girls as potential girlfriends and started treating them as sisters in Christ, I discovered the richness of true friendship. When I stopped worrying about who I was going to marry and began to trust God’s timing, I uncovered the incredible potential of serving God as a single. . . . I believe the time has come for Christians, male and female, to own up to the mess we’ve left behind in our selfish pursuit of short-term romance. Dating may seem an innocent game, but as I see it, we are sinning against each other. What excuse will we have when God asks us to account for our actions and attitudes in relationships? If God sees a sparrow fall (Matthew 10:29), do you think He could possibly overlook the broken hearts and scarred emotions we cause in relationships based on selfishness? Everyone around us may be playing the dating game. But at the end of our lives, we won’t answer to everyone. We’ll answer to God. . . . Long before Seventeen magazine ever gave teenagers tips on dating, people did things very differently. At the turn of the twentieth century, a guy and girl became romantically involved only if they planned to marry. If a young man spent time at a girl’s home, family and friends assumed that he intended to propose to her. But shifting attitudes in culture and the arrival of the automobile brought radical changes. The new “rules” allowed people to indulge in all the thrills of romantic love without having any intention of marriage. Author Beth Bailey documents these changes in a book whose title, From Front Porch to Backseat, says everything about the difference in society’s attitude when dating became the norm. Love and romance became things people could enjoy solely for their recreational value. Though much has changed since the 1920s, the tendency of dating relationships to move toward intimacy without commitment remains very much the same. . . . Many of the attitudes and practices of today’s dating relationships conflict with the lifestyle of smart love God wants us to live.

I saw the pony harnessed myself. In the infernal network of mysteries and uncertainties that now surrounded us, I declare it was a relief to observe how well the buckles and straps understood each other! When you had seen the pony backed into the shafts of the chaise, you had seen something there was no doubt about. And that, let me tell you, was becoming a treat of the rarest kind in our household.

Christians can help people receive the message of reconciliation to God by modeling reconciliation among themselves. John 13:35 says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” How well do we show love when we disagree? Nonbelievers look on and wonder if they can trust Christians to deal gently and respectfully with their questions and doubts if we don’t treat each other that way.

Let’s treat each other well, making more space for every sort of ragamuffin. We needn’t mistake unity with uniformity; we can have the first without the second. The breadth of God’s family is mercifully wide. Grace has no discernment, apparently. Jesus created a motley crew, plucking us from every context and inaugurating a piecemeal clan that has only ever functioned with mercy. We should be grabbing hands, throwing our heads back, and laughing that God saved us all, because surely this is the messiest family ever and He loves us anyway. Our shared redemption should keep us grateful and kind, because what other response even makes sense? May the world see a thankful, committed family who loves their God, adores their Savior, and can’t get enough of one another. This is a story that saves, a story that heals, and the right story to tell.

On this particular night, we were free and we had decided to treat ourselves to a really fancy, friendly dinner. There we were, at the table, all dressed up, and we’d ordered everything, and we were having a very nice time with each other. The headwaiter came, and said there was a phone call for me, and Gloria rose to take it. She was very strange when she came back—she didn’t say anything, and I began to be afraid to ask her anything. Then, nibbling at something she obviously wasn’t tasting, she said, “Well, I’ve got to tell you because the press is on its way over here. They’ve just killed Malcolm X.” The British press said that I accused innocent people of this murder. What I tried to say then, and will try to repeat now, is that whatever hand pulled the trigger did not buy the bullet. That bullet was forged in the crucible of the West, that death was dictated by the most successful conspiracy in the history of the world, and its name is white supremacy.

So identified has the State become in the public mind with the provision of these services that an attack on State financing appears to many people as an attack on the service itself. Thus if one maintains that the State should not supply court services, and that private enterprise on the market could supply such service more efficiently as well as more morally, people tend to think of this as denying the importance of courts themselves. The libertarian who wants to replace government by private enterprises in the above areas is thus treated in the same way as he would be if the government had, for various reasons, been supplying shoes as a tax-financed monopoly from time immemorial. If the government and only the government had had a monopoly of the shoe manufacturing and retailing business, how would most of the public treat the libertarian who now came along to advocate that the government get out of the shoe business and throw it open to private enterprise? He would undoubtedly be treated as follows: people would cry, “How could you? You are opposed to the public, and to poor people, wearing shoes! And who would supply shoes to the public if the government got out of the business? Tell us that! Be constructive! It’s easy to be negative and smart-alecky about government; but tell us who would supply shoes? Which people? How many shoe stores would be available in each city and town? How would the shoe firms be capitalized? How many brands would there be? What material would they use? What lasts? What would be the pricing arrangements for shoes? Wouldn’t regulation of the shoe industry be needed to see to it that the product is sound? And who would supply the poor with shoes? Suppose a poor person didn’t have the money to buy a pair?” These questions, ridiculous as they seem to be and are with regard to the shoe business, are just as absurd when applied to the libertarian who advocates a free market in fire, police, postal service, or any other government operation. The point is that the advocate of a free market in anything cannot provide a “constructive” blueprint of such a market in advance. The essence and the glory of the free market is that individual firms and businesses, competing on the market, provide an ever-changing orchestration of efficient and progressive goods and services: continually improving products and markets, advancing technology, cutting costs, and meeting changing consumer demands as swiftly and as efficiently as possible.

Stop and imagine for a minute. Think and imagine. Think and imagine a world where love is the way. Imagine our homes and families when love is the way. Imagine our neighborhoods and communities where love is the way. Imagine governments and nations where love is the way. Imagine business and commerce when love is the way. Imagine this tired old world when love is the way. When love is the way — unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive — when love is the way, then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again. When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream, and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook. When love is the way, poverty would become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more. When love is the way, there’s plenty of room for all of God’s children. When love is the way, we actually treat each other, well, like we are actually family.

Are those chocolate chip?'' Cole reaches her first and claims one. ''Oh, my godness.'' Nana sets the tray aside and coos the guy. ''Cole, dear, you have a boulder-size knot on your jaw.'' ''River did it.'' Cole smirks at the guy. ''And he insulted my mom. And my dad.'' ''River Marks.'' Nana shakes her head, as if her heart is acually breaking. ''How could you be so rough? And so insensitive!'' River glares at Cole before bowing his head. ''I'm sorry, Nana.'' ''The human body is like a flower. Treat it well, and it will bloom.'' She approaches the ring and extends two cookies. River and I accept with eager thanks. ''Let's be kind to each other and keep our punches away from the face and groin.'' ''Yes, ma'am,'' we say in unison. Then of course, we devour the offering as if we've never tasted sugar. ''Good, good.'' She brushes the crumbs from her fingers. ''I'll leave you kids to your practice.'' She kisses Ali, then Cole, and leaves. ''Are you a rose?'' River sneers at Cole. ''Or a lilly?'' ''Orchid. And your jealousy is showing.'' Cole responds.

And sometimes I get carried away, that's all. If you weren't so...judgemental all the time-" "Am I? I don't think I am . I try not to be. I just don't..." She stopped herself speaking, shook her head. "I know you've been through a lot, in the last few years, and I've tried to understand that, really I have, with your mum and all, but..." "Go on," he said. "I just don't think you're the person I used to know. You're not my friend anymore. That's all." He could think of nothing to say to this, so they stood in silence, until Emma put her hand out, took two fingers of his hand, squeezed them in her palm. "Maybe...maybe this is it, then," she said. "Maybe it's just over." "Over? What's over?" "Us. You and me. Friendship. There are things I needed to talk to you about, Dex. About Ian and me. If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?" "'What's the point?'" "You said yourself, people change, no use getting sentimental about it. Move on, find someone else." "Yeah, but I didn't mean us..." "Why not?" "Because we're....us. We're Dex and Em. Aren't we?" Emma shrugged. "Maybe we've grown out of each other." He said nothing for a moment, then spoke. "So, do you think I've grown out of you, or you've grown out of me?" She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "I think you think I'm....dreary. I think you think I cramp your style. I think you've lost interest in me." "Em I do not think you're dreary." "And neither do I! Neither do I! I think I'm fucking marvellous if you only knew it, and I think you used to think so too! But if you don't or if you're going to just take it for granted, then that's fine. I'm just not prepared to be treated like this anymore." "Treated like what?" She sighed, and it was a moment before she spoke. "Like you always want to be somewhere else, with someone else." He would have denied this, but the Cigarette Girl was waiting in the restaurant at that very moment, the number of his mobile phone tucked into her garter. Later he would wonder if there was something else he might have said to save the situation, a joke perhaps. But nothing occurred to him and Emma let go of his hand.

The Undivided Wholeness of All Things Most mind-boggling of all are Bohm's fully developed ideas about wholeness. Because everything in the cosmos is made out of the seamless holographic fabric of the implicate order, he believes it is as meaningless to view the universe as composed of "parts, " as it is to view the different geysers in a fountain as separate from the water out of which they flow. An electron is not an "elementary particle. " It is just a name given to a certain aspect of the holomovement. Dividing reality up into parts and then naming those parts is always arbitrary, a product of convention, because subatomic particles, and everything else in the universe, are no more separate from one another than different patterns in an ornate carpet. This is a profound suggestion. In his general theory of relativity Einstein astounded the world when he said that space and time are not separate entities, but are smoothly linked and part of a larger whole he called the space-time continuum. Bohm takes this idea a giant step further. He says that everything in the universe is part of a continuum. Despite the apparent separateness of things at the explicate level, everything is a seamless extension of everything else, and ultimately even the implicate and explicate orders blend into each other. Take a moment to consider this. Look at your hand. Now look at the light streaming from the lamp beside you. And at the dog resting at your feet. You are not merely made of the same things. You are the same thing. One thing. Unbroken. One enormous something that has extended its uncountable arms and appendages into all the apparent objects, atoms, restless oceans, and twinkling stars in the cosmos. Bohm cautions that this does not mean the universe is a giant undifferentiated mass. Things can be part of an undivided whole and still possess their own unique qualities. To illustrate what he means he points to the little eddies and whirlpools that often form in a river. At a glance such eddies appear to be separate things and possess many individual characteristics such as size, rate, and direction of rotation, et cetera. But careful scrutiny reveals that it is impossible to determine where any given whirlpool ends and the river begins. Thus, Bohm is not suggesting that the differences between "things" is meaningless. He merely wants us to be aware constantly that dividing various aspects of the holomovement into "things" is always an abstraction, a way of making those aspects stand out in our perception by our way of thinking. In attempts to correct this, instead of calling different aspects of the holomovement "things, " he prefers to call them "relatively independent subtotalities. "10 Indeed, Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems, not only in science but in our lives and our society as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth without affecting the whole. We believe it is possible to treat parts of our body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty, and drug addiction, without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on. In his writings Bohm argues passionately that our current way of fragmenting the world into parts not only doesn't work, but may even lead to our extinction.

Above all else, I want you to know that you are loved and lovable. You will learn this from my words and actions--the lessons on love are in how I treat you and how I treat myself. I want you to engage with the world from a place of worthiness. You will learn that you are worthy of love, belonging, and joy every time you see me practice self-compassion and embrace my own imperfections. We will practice courage in our family by showing up, letting ourselves be seen, and honoring vulnerability. We will share our stories of struggle and strength. There will always be room in our home for both. We will teach you compassion by practicing compassion with ourselves first; then with each other. We will set and respect boundaries; we will honor hard work, hope, and perseverance. Rest and play will be family values, as well as family practices. You will learn accountability and respect by watching me make mistakes and make amends, and by watching how I ask for what I need and talk about how I feel. I want you to know joy, so together we will practice gratitude. I want you to feel joy, so together we will learn how to be vulnerable. When uncertainty and scarcity visit, you will be able to draw from the spirit that is a part of our everyday life. Together we will cry and face fear and grief. I will want to take away your pain, but instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it. We will laugh and sing and dance and create. We will always have permission to be ourselves with each other. No matter what, you will always belong here. As you begin your Wholehearted journey, the greatest gift that I can give to you is to live and love with my whole heart and to dare greatly. I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you. Truly, deeply, seeing you.

Why are women so ungenerous to other women? Is it because we have been tokens for so long? Or is there a deeper animosity we owe it to ourselves to explore? A publisher...couldn't understand why women were so loath to help each other.... The notion flitted through my mind that somehow, by helping..., I might be hurting my own chances for something or other -- what I did not know. If there was room for only one woman poet, another space would be filled.... If I still feel I am in competition with other women, how do less well-known women feel? Terrible, I have to assume. I have had to train myself to pay as much attention to women at parties as to men.... I have had to force myself not to be dismissive of other women's creativity. We have been semi-slaves for so long (as Doris Lessing says) that we must cultivate freedom within ourselves. It doesn't come naturally. Not yet. In her writing about the drama of childhood developments, Alice Miller has created, among other things, a theory of freedom. in order to embrace freedom, a child must be sufficiently nurtured, sufficiently loved. Security and abundance are the grounds for freedom. She shows how abusive child-rearing is communicated from one generation to the next and how fascism profits from generations of abused children. Women have been abused for centuries, so it should surprise no one that we are so good at abusing each other. Until we learn how to stop doing that, we cannot make our revolution stick. Many women are damaged in childhood -- unprotected, unrespected, and treated with dishonesty. Is it any wonder that we build up vast defences against other women since the perpetrators of childhood abuse have so often been women? Is it any wonder that we return intimidation with intimidation, or that we reserve our greatest fury for others who remind us of our own weaknesses -- namely other women? Men, on the other hand, however intellectually condescending, clubbish, loutishly lewd, are rarely as calculatingly cruel as women. They tend, rather, to advance us when we are young and cute (and look like darling daughters) and ignore us when we are older and more sure of our opinions (and look like scary mothers), but they don't really know what they're doing. They are too busy bonding with other men, and creating male pecking orders, to pay attention to us. If we were skilled at compromise and alliance-building, we could transform society. The trouble is: we are not yet good at this. We are still quarrelling among ourselves. This is the crisis feminism faces today.

Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man. He had such and such mistresses, and such and such ministers, and he governed France badly. The heirs of Louis XIV were also weak men, and also governed France badly. They also had such and such favourites and such and such mistresses. Besides which, certain persons were at this time writing books. By the end of the eighteenth century there gathered in Paris two dozen or so persons who started saying that all men were free and equal. Because of this in the whole of France people began to slaughter and drown each other. These people killed the king and a good many others. At this time there was a man of genius in France – Napoleon. He conquered everyone everywhere, i.e. killed a great many people because he was a great genius; and, for some reason, he went off to kill Africans, and killed them so well, and was so clever and cunning, that, having arrived in France, he ordered everyone to obey him, which they did. Having made himself Emperor he again went to kill masses of people in Italy, Austria and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. Now in Russia there was the Emperor Alexander, who decided to reestablish order in Europe, and therefore fought wars with Napoleon. But in the year ’07 he suddenly made friends with him, and in the year ’11 quarrelled with him again, and they both again began to kill a great many people. And Napoleon brought six hundred thousand men to Russia and conquered Moscow. But then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and then the Emperor Alexander, aided by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to raise an army against the disturber of her peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies; and this army marched against Napoleon, who had gathered new forces. The allies conquered Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to renounce the throne, and sent him to the island of Elba, without, however, depriving him of the title of Emperor, and showing him all respect, in spite of the fact that five years before, and a year after, everyone considered him a brigand and beyond the law. Thereupon Louis XVIII, who until then had been an object of mere ridicule to both Frenchmen and the allies, began to reign. As for Napoleon, after shedding tears before the Old Guard, he gave up his throne, and went into exile. Then astute statesmen and diplomats, in particular Talleyrand, who had managed to sit down before anyone else in the famous armchair1 and thereby to extend the frontiers of France, talked in Vienna, and by means of such talk made peoples happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomats and monarchs almost came to blows. They were almost ready to order their troops once again to kill each other; but at this moment Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who hated him, all immediately submitted to him. But this annoyed the allied monarchs very much and they again went to war with the French. And the genius Napoleon was defeated and taken to the island of St Helena, having suddenly been discovered to be an outlaw. Whereupon the exile, parted from his dear ones and his beloved France, died a slow death on a rock, and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. As for Europe, a reaction occurred there, and all the princes began to treat their peoples badly once again.

Then angels were all around them, the old crew who'd formed at Sword & Cross and hundreds of other places before that. Arriane, Roland, Cam, and Annabelle. They'd saved Luce more times than she could every say. "This is hard." Luce folded herself into Roland's arms. "Oh, come on. You already saved the world." He laughed. "Now go save your relationship." "Don't listen to Dr. Phil!" Arriane squealed. "Don't ever leave us!" She was trying to laugh but it wasn't working. Rebellious tears streamed down her face. She didn't wipe them away; she just held on tight to Annabelle's hand. "Okay, fine, go!" "We'll be thinking of you," Annabelle said. "Always." "I'll be thinking of you too." Luce had to believe it was true. Otherwise, if she was really going to forget all this, she couldn't bear to leave them. But the angels smiled sadly, knowing she had to forget them. That left Cam, who was standing close to Daniel, their arms clapped around each other's shoulders. "You pulled it off, brother." "Course I did." Daniel played at being haughty, but it came off as love. "Thanks to you." Cam took Luce's hand. His eyes were bright green, the first color that had ever stood out to her in the grim, dreary world of Sword & Cross. He tilted his head and swallowed, considering his words carefully. He drew her close, and for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. Her heart pounded as his lips bypassed hers and came to a stop, whispering in her ear: "Don't let him flip you off next time." "You know I won't." She laughed. "Ah, Daniel, a mere shadow of a true bad boy." He pressed his hand to his heart and raised an eyebrow at her. "Make sure he treats you well. You deserve the best of everything there is." For once, she didn't want to let go if his hand. "What will you do?" "When you're ruined, there's so much to choose from. Everything opens up." He looked past her into the distant desert clouds. "I'll play my role. I know it well. I know goodbye." He winked at Luce, nodded one final time at Daniel, then rolled back his shoulders, spread his tremendous golden wings, and vanished into the roiling sky. Everyone watched until Cam's wings were a fleck of far-off gold.

Consider this scenario: A man gets a stomachache after each meal. To “treat” this problem, he takes (either by prescription or by self-medication) some antacid or other nostrum. Then he gets a headache (which may or may not be a side effect of the stomach medication); to “treat” the headache he takes aspirin, which further irritates his stomach. Three years later he develops an ulcer, for which he takes another medication, plus large amounts of milk and cream (although an outmoded treatment, it is still being used today). Meanwhile, he is still taking antacids for his indigestion and eating the same way he always had. Eventually, he has an operation to remove his ulcer. He continues with his high-dairy diet. Soon thereafter he develops arteriosclerosis and high blood pressure and begins to take antihypertensive medication. The side effects of the latter include headaches, dizziness, drowsiness, diarrhea, slow heart rate, mental confusion, hallucinations, weight gain, and impotence. When his wife leaves him for a younger man, he takes antidepressants and sleeping pills. He has a heart attack and undergoes an operation to repair a heart valve. Painkillers keep him going as he slowly recuperates. A year or two later, he finds himself with an irreversible neurological disease such as ALS or Alzheimer’s, and he wonders what could have gone wrong. All that’s left for him to do is wait to die, which he can do in a nursing home, drugged into complaisance and painlessness.

I notice that you’re wearing your wedding ring,” he said after I sat down. “Do you think you might be in denial?” I guess it was a fair question, but it caught me off guard. “I know Chris is gone,” I said. “But I do feel as if I’m still married to him.” I looked at my ring. It didn’t mean I was in denial; it meant I loved Chris. Yet the question bothered me. My husband is dead, and of course I acknowledge it. But that’s different than shouting about it. The ring is a symbol of our love as well as our marriage. How should I treat that symbol? Do I have a problem? I left the office in a quandary. The Bible says “until death do you part.” I know that means that marriage lasts only until one death, and that it’s okay for me to marry again. I know good friends wo are widows, and I’ve encouraged them to marry, feeling it was right for them. One of my dearest friends decided to do just that this past summer. It hadn’t been that long since her husband had died, but things had just come together, and her new love deserved to be acknowledged. It was another case, to me, of finding beauty through the ashes. “I kept asking God, why now? Why so soon?” she confessed. “The answer that came back was, timing doesn’t matter. Accept the gift.” She’s right. People may judge her, but she had the courage and strength to admit that she had something beautiful, and that the right thing to do was act on it. I know with certainty that not only was the man right but the timing was as well. They have strengthened each other, and I’m sure will have a life together many can only dream of.

Neither civilized reason nor Christian love would cause any of those people to treat you as they presumably wanted to be treated; only the fear of your power to retaliate would cause them to do that, or to seem to do it, which was (and is) good enough. There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed. People

Say you get drunk in a bar and punch a stranger in the face, spend the night in jail, realize that your life has taken a turn for the worse, get treatment, stop drinking, and dedicate your life to anti-violence work. To the person that you punched that night, you may forever be the person who assaulted them. The person who made them scared to go into bars for a while. The person who made them feel violated. To the people you have helped since, you may always be a hero. The person who made them safer in the world. These are both who you are, they are both valid and do not cancel each other out. If you run into the person you punched years later, they may well still be afraid of you, they may react with anger. They will treat you like someone who punched them, because you are. And even if you respond to that anger and fear like someone who abhors violence, because that is also who you are, you have no right to demand that they see you differently.

is honest enough to admit that. I’m sorry if ignorance scares you. I’m sorry if you can’t stand the thought of dying before you’ve found the meta-yes. But that’s how this works, for now. And in the meantime, bookended by birth and death, riding about in bodies of carbon, loving, suffering, striving, for a short, short time, we get to be. If we’re forced to be in a mysterious universe, and that universe is mute on the subject of its own motivations for existing, I’ll still take living in honest ignorance over your metaphysical posturing any day. That’s real bravery. Not concocting blatantly contradictory stories to comfort oneself, not appealing to the vague transcendent every time you get your worldview in a twist. Ignorance. Brave, honest admission of one’s ignorance, and living with that ignorance in a kind, compassionate manner, treating each other well even if we know we eventually all go to dust and never happen again. We must try to be wise, to be good women, to be good men. The rite of adulthood is the admission

In front of the fire, in his arms, Tatiana was crying against Alexander’s chest. “Tania, why are you crying?” “Oh, Shura.” “Please don’t cry.” “All right. I miss my sister.” “I know.” “Did we treat her right, you think? Did we do right by her?” “We did as well as we could. You did the best you could. What do you think, we asked for this? To break each other’s hearts, to hurt other people, to fall in love like this? I struggled against my feelings. I wanted to love your sister, God bless her. I couldn’t help that it was impossible.” Turning away from him, toward the fire and the Kama behind it and the full moon above it, Tatiana said, “I tried not to love you for her.” “But it was impossible.” “Yes.” Then tentatively, “Shura…are you…in love with me?” “Turn to me,” Alexander said. She turned. “Tatia, I worship you. I’m crazy in love with you. I want you to marry me.” “What?” “Yes. Tatiana, will you marry me? Will you be my wife?” Pause. “Don’t cry.” Pause. “You didn’t answer me.” “Yes, Alexander. I will marry you…I will be your wife.” “Now why are you crying?

Many potential readers will skip the shopping cart or cash-out clerk because they have seen so many disasters reported in the news that they’ve acquired a panic mentality when they think of them. “Disasters scare me to death!” they cry. “I don’t want to read about them!” But really, how can a picture hurt you? Better that each serve as a Hallmark card that greets your fitful fevers with reason and uncurtains your valor. Then, so gospeled, you may see that defeating a disaster is as innocently easy as deciding to go out to dinner. Remove the dread that bars your doors of perception, and you will enjoy a banquet of treats that will make the difference between suffering and safety. You will enter a brave new world that will erase your panic, and release you from the grip of terror, and relieve you of the deadening effects of indifference —and you will find that switch of initiative that will energize your intelligence, empower your imagination, and rouse your sense of vigilance in ways that will tilt the odds of danger from being forever against you to being always in your favor. Indeed, just thinking about a disaster is one of the best things you can do —because it allows you to imagine how you would respond in a way that is free of pain and destruction. Another reason why disasters seem so scary is that many victims tend to see them as a whole rather than divide them into much smaller and more manageable problems. A disaster can seem overwhelming when confronted with everything at once —but if you dice it into its tiny parts and knock them off one at a time, the whole thing can seem as easy as eating a lavish dinner one bite at a time. In a disaster you must also plan for disruption as well as destruction. Death and damage may make the news, but in almost every disaster far more lives are disrupted than destroyed. Wit­ness the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011 and killed 158 people. The path of death and destruction was less than a mile wide and only 22 miles long —but within thirty miles 160,000 citizens whose property didn’t suffer a dime of damage were profoundly disrupted by the carnage, loss of power and water, suspension of civic services, and inability to buy food, gas, and other necessities. You may rightfully believe your chances of dying in a disaster in your lifetime may be nearly nil, but the chances of your life being disrupted by a disaster in the next decade is nearly a sure thing. Not only should you prepare for disasters, you should learn to premeditate them. Prepare concerns the body; premeditate concerns the mind. Everywhere you go, think what could happen and how you might/could/would/should respond. Use your imagination. Fill your brain with these visualizations —run mind-movies in your head —develop a repertoire —until when you walk into a building/room/situation you’ll automatically know what to do. If a disaster does ambush you —sure you’re apt to panic, but in seconds your memory will load the proper video into your mobile disk drive and you’ll feel like you’re watching a scary movie for the second time and you’ll know what to expect and how to react. That’s why this book is important: its manner of vivifying disasters kickstarts and streamlines your acquiring these premeditations, which lays the foundation for satisfying your needs when a disaster catches you by surprise.

Finally, some people tell me that they avoid science fiction because it’s depressing. This is quite understandable if they happened to hit a streak of post-holocaust cautionary tales or a bunch of trendies trying to outwhine each other, or overdosed on sleaze-metal-punk-virtual-noir Capitalist Realism. But the accusation often, I think, reflects some timidity or gloom in the reader’s own mind: a distrust of change, a distrust of the imagination. A lot of people really do get scared and depressed if they have to think about anything they’re not perfectly familiar with; they’re afraid of losing control. If it isn’t about things they know all about already they won’t read it, if it’s a different color they hate it, if it isn’t McDonald’s they won’t eat at it. They don’t want to know that the world existed before they were, is bigger than they are, and will go on without them. They do not like history. They do not like science fiction. May they eat at McDonald’s and be happy in Heaven." Pro: "But what I like in and about science fiction includes these particular virtues: vitality, largeness, and exactness of imagination; playfulness, variety, and strength of metaphor; freedom from conventional literary expectations and mannerism; moral seriousness; wit; pizzazz; and beauty. Let me ride a moment on that last word. The beauty of a story may be intellectual, like the beauty of a mathematical proof or a crystalline structure; it may be aesthetic, the beauty of a well-made work; it may be human, emotional, moral; it is likely to be all three. Yet science fiction critics and reviewers still often treat the story as if it were a mere exposition of ideas, as if the intellectual “message” were all. This reductionism does a serious disservice to the sophisticated and powerful techniques and experiments of much contemporary science fiction. The writers are using language as postmodernists; the critics are decades behind, not even discussing the language, deaf to the implications of sounds, rhythms, recurrences, patterns—as if text were a mere vehicle for ideas, a kind of gelatin coating for the medicine. This is naive. And it totally misses what I love best in the best science fiction, its beauty." "I am certainly not going to talk about the beauty of my own stories. How about if I leave that to the critics and reviewers, and I talk about the ideas? Not the messages, though. There are no messages in these stories. They are not fortune cookies. They are stories.

I want you to imagine that you live on a planet where everyone has a skin disease. For two or three thousand years, the people on your planet have suffered the same disease: Their entire bodies are covered by wounds that are infected, and those wounds really hurt when you touch them. Of course, they believe this is a normal physiology of the skin. Even the medical books describe this disease as a normal condition. When the people are born, their skin is healthy, but around three or four years of age, the first wounds start to appear. By the time they are teenagers, there are wounds all over their bodies. Can you imagine how these people are going to treat each other? In order to relate with one another, they have to protect their wounds. They hardly ever touch each other’s skin because it is too painful. If by accident you touch someone’s skin, it is so painful that right away she gets angry and touches your skin, just to get even. Still, the instinct to love is so strong that you pay a high price to have relationships with others. Well, imagine that a miracle occurs one day. You awake and your skin is completely healed. There are no wounds anymore, and it doesn’t hurt to be touched. Healthy skin you can touch feels wonderful because the skin is made for perception. Can you imagine yourself with healthy skin in a world where everyone has a skin disease? You cannot touch others because it hurts them, and no one touches you because they make the assumption that it will hurt you.

There are three people you will be judged heavily on how you treat them in this lifetime. For the man, it is his mother for giving him life, his wife for showing him life, and his daughter for teaching her all that he learned from life. For the woman, it her father for giving her the seed of life, her husband for showing her life, and her son for teaching him all that he has learned from life. How a person treats their parents is how they show their gratefulness to the Creator for life. How a husband and wife treat each other, is how they show the Creator how well they do with this gift of life, and how they value LOVE. And what each parent must teach their kids, are the valuable lessons they gained in life. A father must be good to his wife and daughter, because from watching this treatment -- the son will learn how to treat all women, and his daughter will know what a good man is supposed to act like. And a mother must always remain morally good and faithful to her husband, be attentive to all her children, and be filled with patience, forgiveness, kind words, compassion and love -- so her children are raised to respect all mothers, and know what a good woman is supposed to act like. If you neglect your fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives, then don't be surprised when the Creator is forced to neglect you. Neglect, and you will be neglected. Protect, and you will be protected. Reject, and you will be rejected. Love all, and all that love will be mirrored by the Creator and reflected back onto YOU.

Alex and Conner looked at each other, thinking the same thing—they weren’t going to get rid of him. Rather than spending time arguing, the twins went right into forming the next phase of their own plan. “One of us needs to stay in Neverland and look after the books,” Alex said. “Who’s it going to be this time?” The twins, the Tin Woodman, Mother Goose, and Lester all turned to Red. Her eyes grew large and her whole body tightened—every part of her rejected the idea. “Don’t even think about it,” Red said. “I’m not staying on this island.” “Red, I don’t mean to sound rude, but you’re the least useful in the group,” Conner said. “We need you to stay here and make sure nothing happens to the books.” “These savages have already shot me,” Red said, and pointed at the Lost Boys. “What do you think they’ll do to me when I’m alone?” “Red, I promise you’ll be safer here than in Wonderland,” Alex said. Red couldn’t believe her ears. She might as well have been persuaded to walk off a cliff. The twins didn’t give her any more chance to argue. Before she knew it, Conner was handing her their copy of Peter Pan as if the decision was final. “Boys, I order you to listen to Miss Red,” Peter instructed. “I want you to protect her and make her very comfortable while we’re away. Treat her like you would your own mother.” The Lost Boys were very excited by this idea. Red looked like she was going to be sick. “Yes, sir!” Tootles said, and saluted Peter. “Now just wait one minute! Am I supposed to sleep in the jungle?” Red asked, but none of her friends were listening anymore. “Of

Today, each of you will make a decision,” Caine said. “To go with Sam, or to stay here. I won’t try to stop anyone, and I won’t hold it against anyone.” He placed his hand over his heart. “For those who choose to stay, let me be very clear: I will be in charge. Not as a mayor, but as a king. My word will be law. My decisions will be final.” That caused some murmuring, most of it unhappy. “But I’ll also do everything I can to leave each of you alone. Quinn, if he chooses to stay, can still fish. Albert, if he chooses to stay, will still run his business. Freaks and normals will be treated equally.” He seemed about to add something else but caught himself after a sidelong look at Toto. The silence lengthened and Sam knew it was time for him to speak. In the past he’d always had Astrid at his side for things like this. He was not much of a speaker. And in any case, he didn’t have much to say. “Anyone who goes with me has a vote in how we do stuff. I guess I’ll be more or less in charge, but we’ll probably choose some other people, create a council like . . . Well, hopefully better than we had before. And, um . . .” He was tempted to laugh at his own pitiful performance. “Look, people, if you want someone, some . . . king, good grief, to tell you what to do, stay here. If you want to make more of your own decisions, well, come with me.” He hadn’t said enough to even cause Toto to comment. “You know which side I’m on, people,” Brianna yelled. “Sam’s been carrying the load since day one.” “It was Caine that saved us,” a voice cried out. “Where was Sam?” The crowd seemed undecided. Caine was beaming confidence, but Sam noticed that his jaw clenched, his smile was forced, and he was worried.

She didn't say it. But it was there in her eyes. Right there with that uncontainable arrogance when it came to her work. This was only about the surgery to her. He thought about backing away, but he was sick of backing away from fights. So sick of it. "And doing your job well is sending her home where she can't be monitored, where she can't be treated? For what? To teach her a lesson? Put her in a corner until she comes around to where you need her to be? So you can prove your skill?" She took a step back, but she didn't look away. "I don't need to prove my skill. But you seem to need to find someone to blame. Maybe you should try stepping up instead, and try finding a solution?" Once again, was she bloody joking? He'd been stepping up and finding solutions for problems since he was twelve years old. Feeding his family, putting a roof over their heads. Real problems, not challenges he sought out to prove his skill. "I'm not blaming you for what's happened to Emma. Hell, I couldn't appreciate your skill more. But pardon me for wondering if this is about Emma at all for you, or if it's only about what you can accomplish." A combination of emotions flashed in her strangely colored eyes; in the end, disbelief at being contradicted shone brightest. "Do you always judge people without knowing one damn thing about them? Or is it just me?" He almost laughed. The woman had called him the hired help without giving it one thought and she thought he judged people? He turned around and looked at the idyllic white stucco home nestled into a a row of other idyllic homes, at the Tesla parked in the driveway, at the ease with which she had worn those rumpled scrubs at Ashna's and still looked like a bombshell. He wanted to ask her what the hardest thing she'd ever been through was, but he couldn't bring himself to. "I guess that would make two of us judging each other then, wouldn't it?" Her cheeks colored. But this back-and-forth was useless. He wasn't here to bring down mighty egos.

Yes, I can quite well believe that; I’m sure I shall never wish to escape you. But you are a mysterious Master.” “You seem to me rather an exacting servant. I have shaped myself like a jobbing gardener, I am sitting on the grass beside you (I’ll have one of your apples if I may. They are a fruit I am particularly fond of), I am doing everything in my power to be agreeable and reassuring… What more do you want?” “That is exactly what I complain of. You are too lifelike to be natural; why, it might be Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann. No! if I am really a witch, treat me as such. Satisfy my curiosity. Tell me about yourself.” “Tell me first what you think,” he answered. “I think”—she began cautiously (while he hid his cards it would not do to show all hers)—“I think you are a kind of black knight, wandering about and succoring decayed gentlewomen.” “There are warlocks too, remember.” “I can’t take warlocks so seriously, not as a class. It is we witches who count. We have more need of you. Women have such vivid imaginations, and lead such dull lives. Their pleasure in life is so soon over; they are so dependent upon others, and their dependence so soon becomes a nuisance. Do you understand?” He was silent. She continued, slowly, knitting her brows in the effort to make clear to herself and him the thought that was in her mind: “It’s like this. When I think of witches, I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded. I see them, wives and sisters of respectable men, chapel members, and blacksmiths, and small farmers, and Puritans. In places like Bedfordshire, the sort of country one sees from the train. You know. Well, there they were, there they are, child-rearing, house-keeping, hanging washed dishcloths on currant bushes; and for diversion each other’s silly conversation, and listening to men talking together in the way that men talk and women listen. Quite different to the way women talk, and men listen, if they listen at all. And all the time being thrust further down into dullness when the one thing all women hate is to be thought dull.

Why should he treat Elizabeth as if he harbored any feelings for her, including anger? Elizabeth sensed that he was wavering a little, and she pressed home her advantage, using calm reason: “Surely nothing that happened between us should make us behave badly to each other now. I mean, when you think on it, it was noting to us but a harmless weekend flirtation, wasn’t it?” “Obviously.” “Neither of us was hurt, were we?” “No.” “Well then, there’s no reason why we should not be cordial to each other now, is there?” she demanded with a bright, beguiling smile. “Good heavens, if every flirtation ended in enmity, no one in the ton would be speaking to anyone else!” She had neatly managed to put him in the position of either agreeing with her or else, by disagreeing, admitting that she had been something more to him than a flirtation, and Ian realized it. He’d guessed where her calm arguments were leading, but even so, he was reluctantly impressed with how skillfully she was maneuvering him into having to agree with her. “Flirtations,” he reminded her smoothly, “don’t normally end in duels.” “I know, and I am sorry my brother shot you.” Ian was simply not proof against the appeal in those huge green eyes of hers. “Forget it,” he said with an irritated sigh, capitulating to all she was asking. “Stay the seven days.” Suppressing the urge to twirl around with relief, she smiled into his eyes. “Then could we have a truce for the time I’m here?” “That depends.” “On what?” His brows lifted in mocking challenge. “On whether or not you can make a decent breakfast.” “Let’s go in the house and see what we have.” With Ian standing beside her Elizabeth surveyed the eggs and cheese and bread, and then the stove. “I shall fix something right up,” she promised with a smile that concealed her uncertainty. “Are you sure you’re up to the challenge?” Ian asked, but she seemed so eager, and her smile was so disarming, that he almost believed she knew how to cook. “I shall prevail, you’ll see,” she told him brightly, reaching for a wide cloth and tying it around her narrow waist. Her glance was so jaunty that Ian turned around to keep himself from grinning at her. She was obviously determined to attack the project with vigor and determination, and he was equally determined not to discourage her efforts. “You do that,” he said, and he left her alone at the stove.

My father only saw six months of combat before being taken prisoner. How did they capture him? They were advancing over a frozen lake while the enemy’s artillery shot at the ice. Few made it across, and those who did had just spent their last strength swimming through freezing water; all of them lost their weapons along the way. They came to the shore half-naked. The Finns would stretch out their arms to rescue them and some people would take their hands, while others…many of them wouldn’t accept any help from the enemy. That was how they had been trained. My father grabbed one of their hands, and he was dragged out of the water. I remember his amazement: “They gave me schnapps to warm me up. Put me in dry clothes. They laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, ‘You made it, Ivan!’ ” My father had never been face to face with the enemy before. He didn’t understand why they were so cheerful… The Finnish campaign ended in 1940…Soviet war prisoners were exchanged for Finns. They were marched toward each other in columns. On their side, the Finns were greeted with hugs and handshakes…Our men, on the other hand, were immediately treated like enemies. “Brothers! Friends!” they threw themselves on their comrades. “Halt! Another step and we’ll shoot!” The column was surrounded by soldiers with German Shepherds. They were led to specially prepared barracks surrounded by barbed wire. The interrogations began…“How were you taken prisoner?” the interrogator asked my father. “The Finns pulled me out of a lake.” “You traitor! You were saving your own skin instead of the Motherland.” My father also considered himself guilty. That’s how they’d been trained…There was no trial. They marched everyone out on the quad and read the entire division their sentence: six years in the camps for betraying the Motherland. Then they shipped them off to Vorkuta to build a railway over the permafrost. My God! It was 1941…The Germans were moving in on Moscow…No one even told them that war had broken out—after all, they were enemies, it would only make them happy. Belarus was occupied by the Nazis. They took Smolensk. When they finally heard about it, all of them wanted to go to the front, they all wrote letters to the head of the camp…to Stalin…And in response, they were told, “Work for the victory on the home front, you bastards. We don’t need traitors like you at the front.” They all…Papa…he told me…All of them wept

ELEANOR OLSON’S OATMEAL COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces, ½ pound) salted butter, softened 1 cup brown sugar (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 1 cup white (granulated) sugar 2 eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 and ½ cups flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 3 cups quick-cooking oatmeal (I used Quaker Quick 1-Minute) ½ cup chopped nuts (optional) (Eleanor used walnuts) ½ cup raisins or another small, fairly soft sweet treat (optional) Hannah’s 1st Note: The optional fruit or sweet treats are raisins, any dried fruit chopped into pieces, small bites of fruit like pineapple or apple, or small soft candies like M&M’s, Milk Duds, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, or any other flavored chips. Lisa and I even used Sugar Babies once—they’re chocolate-covered caramel nuggets—and everyone was crazy about them. You can also use larger candies if you push one in the center of each cookie. Here, as in so many recipes, you are only limited by the selection your store has to offer and your own imagination. Hannah’s 2nd Note: These cookies are very quick and easy to make with an electric mixer. Of course you can also mix them by hand. Mix the softened butter, brown sugar, and white sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on HIGH speed until they’re light and fluffy. Add the beaten eggs and mix them in on MEDIUM speed. Turn the mixer down to LOW speed and add the vanilla extract, the salt, and the baking soda. Mix well. Add the flour in half-cup increments, beating on MEDIUM speed after each addition. With the mixer on LOW speed, add the oatmeal. Then add the optional nuts, and/or the optional fruit or sweet treat. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, take the bowl out of the mixer, and give the cookie dough a final stir by hand. Let it sit, uncovered, on the counter while you prepare your cookie sheets. Spray your cookie sheets with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Alternatively, you can line them with parchment paper and spray that lightly with cooking spray. Get out a tablespoon from your silverware drawer. Wet it under the faucet so that the dough won’t stick to it, and scoop up a rounded Tablespoon of dough. Drop it in mounds on the cookie sheet, 12 mounds to a standard-size sheet. Bake Eleanor Olson’s Oatmeal Cookies at 350 degrees F. for 9 to 11 minutes, or until they’re nice and golden on top. (Mine took 10 minutes.) Yield: Approximately 3 dozen chewy, satisfying oatmeal cookies.

I told you before--you mustn’t let Edward scare you. He’s a bully and a coward. What would Frank Merriwell do if he were you?” Frank Merriwell--I was thoroughly sick of hearing that name. “I don’t care what some dumb guy in a story would do. I’m not going to fight Edward.” “Fight me then.” Hannah raised her fists and danced around on her bare feet, bouncing, ducking, and swinging at the air around my head. “Pretend I’m Edward!” I ducked a punch, and she swung again. “Put up your dukes,” she ordered, “defend yourself, sir.” This time Hannah clipped my chin hard enough to knock me down. Her shirtwaist was completely untucked, her face was smudged, her hair was tumbling down her back and hanging in her eyes. “On your feet, sir,” she shouted. “Let’s see your fighting spirit!” Hannah was making so much noise she didn’t hear John Larkin push aside the branches and enter the grove. When he saw her take another swing at me, he started laughing. Hannah whirled around, her face scarlet, and stared at John. “What do you mean by sneaking up on us like a common Peeping Tom?” “With the noise you’ve been making, you wouldn’t have noticed a herd of rampaging elephants.” John was still laughing, but Hannah was furious. Putting her fists on her hips, she scowled at him. “Well, now you know the truth about me. I’m no lady and I never claimed to be one. I suppose you’ll start taking Amelia Carter for rides in your precious tin lizzie and treating her to sodas at your father’s drugstore. I’m sure she’d never brawl with her brothers.” Theo and I looked at each other. We were both hoping Hannah would make John leave. Before he came along and ruined everything, we’d been having fun. To my disappointment, John didn’t seem to realize he was unwanted. Leaning against a tree, he watched Hannah run her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what you’re so fired up about,” he said. “Why should I want to take Amelia anywhere? I’ve never met a more boring girl. As for her brothers--a little brawling wouldn’t hurt them. Or Amelia either.” Hannah turned away, her face flushed, and John winked at me. “Your sister’s first rate,” he said, “but I wager I know a sight more about boxing than she does. Why not let me show you a thing or two?” Happy again, Hannah smiled at John. “What a grand idea! But go slow, Andrew’s still weak.” When John took off his jacket, I edged closer to Hannah. “I like your lessons,” I said to her, scowling at John. He was rolling up his sleeves, probably to show off his muscles. Next to him, I was nothing but a skinny little baby. He’d knock me flat and everyone would laugh at me.

I ask them to write brief descriptions of two recent moments in the classroom: a moment when things went so well that you knew you were born to be a teacher and a moment when things went so poorly that you wished you had never been born! Then we get into small groups to learn more about our own natures through the two cases. First, I ask people to help each other identify the gifts that they possess that made the good moment possible. It is an affirming experience to see our gifts at work in a real-life situation-and it often takes the eyes of others to help us see. Our strongest gifts are usually those we are barely aware of possessing. They are a part of our God-given nature, with us from the moment we drew first breath, and we are no more conscious of having them than we are of breathing. Then we turn to the second case. Having been bathed with praise in the first case, people now expect to be subjected to analysis, critique, and a variety of fixes: "If I had been in your shoes, I would have ... ," or, "Next time you are in a situation like that, why don't you ... ?" But I ask them to avoid that approach. I ask them instead to help each other see how limitations and liabilities are the flip side of our gifts, how a particular weakness is the inevitable trade-off for a particular strength. We will become better teachers not by trying to fill the potholes in our souls but by knowing them so well that we can avoid falling into them. My gift as a teacher is the ability to "dance" with my students, to teach and learn with them through dialogue and interaction. When my students are willing to dance with nee, the result can be a thing of beauty. When they refuse to dance, when my gift is denied, things start to become messy: I get hurt and angry, I resent the students-whom I blame for my plight-and I start treating them defensively, in ways that make the dance even less likely to happen. But when I understand this liability as a trade-off for my strengths, something new and liberating arises within me. I no longer want to have my liability "fixed"-by learning how to dance solo, for example, when no one wants to dance with me-for to do that would be to compromise or even destroy my gift. Instead I want to learn how to respond more gracefully to students who refuse to dance, not projecting my limitation on them but embracing it as part of myself. I will never be a good teacher for students who insist on remaining wallflowers throughout their careers-that is simply one of my many limits. But perhaps I can develop enough self-understanding to keep inviting the wallflowers onto the floor, holding open the possibility that some of them might hear the music, accept the invitation, and join me in the dance of teaching and learning.

Not all monotheisms are exactly the same at the moment. They're all based on the same illusion. They're all plagiarisms of each other, but there is one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace not just to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness, and self-pity. I am talking about militant Islam. Globally, it's a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states, and with an enormous fortune it's pumping the ideologies of Wahhabism and Salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young in its madrassas, training people in violence, making a cult of death and suicide and murder. That's what it does globally. It's quite strong. In our societies it poses as a cringing minority, whose faith you might offend, who deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need. Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn't it? It says it's the Final Revelation. It says that God spoke to one illiterate businessman in the Arabian Peninsula three times through an archangel, and that the resultant material—which as you can see as you read it is largely plagiarized ineptly from the Old and The New Testament—is to be accepted as the Final Revelation and as the final and unalterable one, and that those who do not accept this revelation are fit to be treated as cattle infidels, potential chattel, slaves and victims. Well, I tell you what, I don't think Muhammad ever heard those voices. I don't believe it. And the likelihood that I am right—as opposed to the likelihood that a businessman who couldn't read had bits of the Old and The New Testament re-dictated to him by an archangel—I think puts me much more near the position of being objectively correct. But who is the one under threat? The person who promulgates this and says I'd better listen because if I don't I'm in danger, or me who says, "No, I think this is so silly you can even publish a cartoon about it"? And up go the placards and the yells and the howls and the screams—this is in London, this is in Toronto, this is in New York, it's right in our midst now—"Behead those who cartoon Islam." Do they get arrested for hate speech? No. Might I get in trouble for saying what I just said about the prophet Muhammad? Yes, I might. Where are your priorities, ladies and gentlemen? You're giving away what is most precious in your own society, and you're giving it away without a fight, and you're even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you while you do this. Make the best use of the time you've got left.

Thirty-Nine Ways to Lower Your Cortisol 1 Meditate. 2 Do yoga. 3 Stretch. 4 Practice tai chi. 5 Take a Pilates class. 6 Go for a labyrinth walk. 7 Get a massage. 8 Garden (lightly). 9 Dance to soothing, positive music. 10 Take up a hobby that is quiet and rewarding. 11 Color for pleasure. 12 Spend five minutes focusing on your breathing. 13 Follow a consistent sleep schedule. 14 Listen to relaxing music. 15 Spend time laughing and having fun with someone. (No food or drink involved.) 16 Interact with a pet. (It also lowers their cortisol level.) 17 Learn to recognize stressful thinking and begin to: Train yourself to be aware of your thoughts, breathing, heart rate, and other signs of tension to recognize stress when it begins. Focus on being aware of your mental and physical states, so that you can become an objective observer of your stressful thoughts instead of a victim of them. Recognize stressful thoughts so that you can formulate a conscious and deliberate reaction to them. A study of forty-three women in a mindfulness-based program showed that the ability to describe and articulate stress was linked to a lower cortisol response.28 18 Develop faith and participate in prayer. 19 Perform acts of kindness. 20 Forgive someone. Even (or especially?) yourself. 21 Practice mindfulness, especially when you eat. 22 Drink black and green tea. 23 Eat probiotic and prebiotic foods. Probiotics are friendly, symbiotic bacteria in foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi. Prebiotics, such as soluble fiber, provide food for these bacteria. (Be sure they are sugar-free!) 24 Take fish or krill oil. 25 Make a gratitude list. 26 Take magnesium. 27 Try ashwagandha, an Asian herbal supplement used in traditional medicine to treat anxiety and help people adapt to stress. 28 Get bright sunlight or exposure to a lightbox within an hour of waking up (great for fighting seasonal affective disorder as well). 29 Avoid blue light at night by wearing orange or amber glasses if using electronics after dark. (Some sunglasses work.) Use lamps with orange bulbs (such as salt lamps) in each room, instead of turning on bright overhead lights, after dark. 30 Maintain healthy relationships. 31 Let go of guilt. 32 Drink water! Stay hydrated! Dehydration increases cortisol. 33 Try emotional freedom technique, a tapping strategy meant to reduce stress and activate the parasympathetic nervous system (our rest-and-digest system). 34 Have an acupuncture treatment. 35 Go forest bathing (shinrin-yoku): visit a forest and breathe its air. 36 Listen to binaural beats. 37 Use a grounding mat, or go out into the garden barefoot. 38 Sit in a rocking chair; the soothing motion is similar to the movement in utero. 39 To make your cortisol fluctuate (which is what you want it to do), end your shower or bath with a minute (or three) under cold water.

Wife's Letter (excerpt) It was not the mask that died among the boots, but you. The girl with the yoyo was not the only one to know about your masked play. From the very first instant, when, elated with pride, you talked about the distortion of the magnetic field, I too saw through you completely. Please don’t insult me any more by asking how I did it. Of course, I was flustered, confused, and frightened to death. Under any circumstances, it was an unimaginably drastic way of acting, so different from your ordinary self. It was hallucinatory, seeing you so full of self-confidence. Even you knew very well that I had seen through you. You knew and yet demanded that we go on with the play in silence. ... But you went from one misunderstanding to the next, didn’t you? You write that I rejected you, but that’s not true. Didn’t you reject yourself all by yourself?.. In a happy frame of mind, I reflected that love strips the mask from each of us, and we must endeavor for those we love to put the mask on so that it can be taken off again. For if there is no mask to start with, there is no pleasure in removing it, is there? ... Is what you think to be the mask in reality your real face, or is what you think to be your real face really a mask? Yes, you do understand. Anyone who is seduced is seduced realizing this. ... At first you were apparently trying to get your own self back by means of the mask, but before you knew it you had come to think of it only as your magician’s cloak for escaping from yourself. So it was not a mask, but somewhat the same as another real face, wasn’t it? You finally revealed your true colors. It was not the mask, but you yourself. It is meaningful to put a mask on, precisely because one makes others realize it is a mask. Even with cosmetics, which you abominate so, we never try to conceal the fact that it is make-up. After all, it was not that the mask was bad, but that you were too unaware of how to treat it. Even though you put the mask on, you could not do a thing while you were wearing it. Good or bad, you could not do a thing. All you could manage was to wander through the streets and write long, never-ending confessions, like a snake with its tail in its mouth. It was all the same to you whether you burned your face or didn’t, whether you put on a mask or didn’t. You were incapable of calling the mask back. Since the mask will not come back, there is no reason for me to return either. ... While you spoke of the face as being some kind of roadway between fellow human beings, you were like a snail that thinks only of its own doorway. You were showing off. Even though you had forced me into a compound where I had already been, you set up a fuss as if I had scaled a prison wall, as if I had absconded with money. And so, when you began to focus on my face you were flustered and confused, and without a word you at once nailed up the door of the mask. Indeed, as you said, perhaps death filled the world. I wonder if scattering the seeds of death is not the deed of men who think only of themselves, as you do. You don’t need me. What you really need is a mirror. Because any stranger is for you simply a mirror in which to reflect yourself.

*Wife's Letter* Pt1 ... It was not the mask that died among the boots, but you. The girl with the yoyo was not the only one to know about your masked play. From the very first instant, when, elated with pride, you talked about the distortion of the magnetic field, I too saw through you completely. Please don’t insult me any more by asking how I did it. Of course, I was flustered, confused, and frightened to death. Under any circumstances, it was an unimaginably drastic way of acting, so different from your ordinary self. It was hallucinatory, seeing you so full of self-confidence. Even you knew very well that I had seen through you. You knew and yet demanded that we go on with the play in silence. I considered it a dreadful thing at first, but I soon changed my mind, thinking that perhaps you were acting out of sympathy for me. Then, though the things you did seemed a little embarrassing, they began to present the appearance of a delicate and suave invitation to a dance. And as I watched you become amazingly serious and go on pretending to be deceived, my heart began to fill with a feeling of gratitude, and so I followed after you meekly. But you went from one misunderstanding to the next, didn’t you? You write that I rejected you, but that’s not true. Didn’t you reject yourself all by yourself? I felt that I could understand your wanting to. In view of the accident and all, I had more than half resigned myself to sharing your suffering. For that very reason, your mask seemed quite good to me. In a happy frame of mind, I reflected that love strips the mask from each of us, and we must endeavor for those we love to put the mask on so that it can be taken off again. For if there is no mask to start with, there is no pleasure in removing it, is there? Do you understand what I mean? I think you do. After all, don’t even you have your doubts? Is what you think to be the mask in reality your real face, or is what you think to be your real face really a mask? Yes, you do understand. Anyone who is seduced is seduced realizing this. But the mask did not return. At first you were apparently trying to get your own self back by means of the mask, but before you knew it you had come to think of it only as your magician’s cloak for escaping from yourself. So it was not a mask, but somewhat the same as another real face, wasn’t it? You finally revealed your true colors. It was not the mask, but you yourself. It is meaningful to put a mask on, precisely because one makes others realize it is a mask. Even with cosmetics, which you abominate so, we never try to conceal the fact that it is make-up. After all, it was not that the mask was bad, but that you were too unaware of how to treat it. Even though you put the mask on, you could not do a thing while you were wearing it. Good or bad, you could not do a thing. All you could manage was to wander through the streets and write long, never-ending confessions, like a snake with its tail in its mouth. It was all the same to you whether you burned your face or didn’t, whether you put on a mask or didn’t. You were incapable of calling the mask back. Since the mask will not come back, there is no reason for me to return either.

There it is, forming behind us: The Fat Blue Phalanx. All the smug self-satisfied maleness you can drink, and free refills at the station house. It's all I can see in cops, that patriarchal bullshit that will never yield to a contract of mutual respect. That grunting fuck-obsessed inability to deobjectify you and treat you as a person, it’s a subclass of male that will never, ever change, no matter what. There they are with their uniforms and their discipline, an abstract and codified representation of all the construction workers who ever whistled at you and there you were, too polite to pee in their toolboxes in retaliation, too polite to challenge them, walking away red-faced because the worst part of it is that you were wondering whether they were really whistling like they’d whistle at Caprice or if they were just being sarcastic and were even now laughing at you with your short skinny legs and flat ass. Besides you’re not supposed to let it get to you. You’re supposed to have a sense of humour: they do. See them waving their cocks at each other and farting? You aren’t allowed to break the rules of their society which say that you are a cold uptight lesbian bitch if you don’t like their hohoho aggressive male ways so just hold your head high from your position of moral superiority and go home and tell your boyfriend (if you have one, which I don’t) who if you’re lucky will offer to go beat them up knowing you won’t take him up on it because you know perfectly well he’d probably get his ass kicked, most of the boys you know are highly ass-kickable because they’ve been brought up nicely. They were brought up in the luxury of knowing the money power of the military-industrial complex would protect them from the dirt and the grime of uneducated testosterone. its thanx to our weak boyfriends that we have cops at all, surrogate cock and balls to maintain ‘order’, whatever that is. Or was. And where does it really leave you as a prisoner of the suburbs? Fuming over some tiny incident that the aggressors have already forgotten about, but you have the sinking feeling you've just sniffed the true underbelly and the aroma was not what you get in Calvin Klein ads. Scratch 'n' sniff, scratch 'n' sniff, peel the onion... will you ever get down to the reality of what this place is about? And I know I shouldn't brand individual cops with the big blue brush but in my mind these guys are a symbol of the whole iron-cage Boy system that makes me always a victim, no matter what I do, it's a cage I can't escape. I'm the little princess. They dominate, they aggress, they protect.

each other. No words were needed, they both felt the same. What a load of bollocks. They’d known each other two minutes. How could they be in love? Joan was just going over the top. The four glasses clinked together. “Tuck in guys. This is one of my better dishes. My mam helped with it too so I know it’s going to be top notch.” Trevor rubbed his hands together and grabbed his fork. There were no flies on him he was tucking in. Food was his comfort and now Joan was off the market he needed it more than ever. Mabel picked at the food on her plate, nibbling, watching everyone else around her. Patrick sat next to Joan and every chance he got he kissed her, held her hand. He knew he was on show here tonight and he was making sure he ticked all the boxes. * Cath and Katrina were chatting in the yard. The winds were blowing with force. They both looked freezing as they marched around the concrete yard. There were high steel fences with barbed wire on the top of it. There was no way out. Katrina needed a friendly ear, some advice, someone to ease her heavy heart. Once she’d filled Cath in on everything that had happened they both sat on a bench not far from the fence.  The screws watched them with caution and never took their eyes from them. They were high-risk prisoners. Cath let out a laboured breath and bit down hard on her bottom lip. “For crying out loud didn’t I tell you to keep away from that prick. Look what’s happened now. You’ve fucking blown it. You were getting out of this shit-hole in a few more months and you’ve gone and fucked it all. Where is your head at woman, you should of steered well clear of any trouble?” Katrina snivelled, her eyes flooding with tears. “I know, I just wanted to hurt him like he’s hurt me. I loved that man with all my heart and he just fucked off and left me. I’ve lost it all Cath. My kids, my home, everything I ever loved. How can I tell my kids I’m not coming home? It will break their hearts. I’ve made promises to them. A better life, no more trouble. Their mother home for good.” “They’ve not charged you yet. Wait until it’s set in stone and then you know what you’re dealing with.” Cath held her in her arms and squeezed her tight. She knew as much as the other person that she wasn’t getting out of jail anytime soon. The crime she’d committed would be all over the news soon and the public would know who she was. She’d seen it so many times before. Once an offender was named, the nation would be all over it. No doubt Norman would be made out to be the hero too. There would be no story about the way he treated this woman, no mention of all the women he’d abused in the past. Maybe someone should have grassed him up. Katrina had warned him if he she got her collar felt there would be repercussions. Why hadn’t she put his name in the picture yet? Now was the time to put her cards on the table and look after number one. Maybe if she turned Queen’s evidence she could get a deal with the prosecution. A lesser sentence, a few years knocked off. Cath was aware of this but to be a Judas was another matter. Katrina would have to

It would have been unusual in the ancient Near East for a deity quickly and easily to reveal his name (e.g., Ge 32:29); this may be part of the reason for the delayed answer here in Ex 3. Nevertheless, Yahweh’s name is not meant to be kept secret, and it is vitally important for Moses to have this knowledge. He is to speak Yahweh’s words (6:29), wield his power (7:17) and function like Yahweh to both his brother Aaron (4:16) and to Pharaoh (7:1). To this day, no one knows for sure how to pronounce the name of God—at least not as the ancient Israelites would have pronounced it. There are four consonants in the name—sometimes called the Tetragrammaton (“four-letter word”): y-h-w-h. The vowels are the tricky part. Hebrew is generally written without vowels. In the second half of the first millennium AD, some Jewish scribes began adding small marks to Biblical manuscripts in order to indicate how the vowel sounds of each word should be pronounced. They treated the name of God, however, differently from other words. It had long been customary in Jewish tradition not to pronounce the name Yahweh. Instead of saying “Yahweh,” people would often say “Adonay,” which means “my Lord” (and has led to “the LORD” as the traditional rendering of Yahweh in the English Bible). In order to remind readers to say “Adonay” instead of “Yahweh,” the scribes added the marks for the vowel sounds of Adonay to the consonants for Yahweh in their manuscripts. Pronouncing the consonants of yhwh with the vowels of adonay produces the well-known “Jehovah,” which is certainly not the right pronunciation.

Without it being said, I was treated as a kid with a bright future and Cassie, well, she wasn’t necessarily not going to have one, but her path would be different from mine. Without anybody saying so outright, I was being told that my path was the more valuable. I got that from my parents, and from Mr. Cartwright when he chose me for speech team, and from my teachers when they patted me on the back and gave me good grades, and from my grandmother, who, when she asked me about Cassie at Thanksgiving and I told her we’d been drifting apart, caressed my cheek with her shiny hand that smelled of rosewater and said, “It’s hard growing up, because each of us must follow our own star”—which was, of itself, pretty neutral, but then she added, “And some of us have brighter stars to follow than others, I’m afraid.

The correlation between cultivating knowledge, creative activity, and a virtuous empathetic existence… As well as love and well-being remain central to a Lexivists life. I found the Confucius outlook to be refreshing and ahead of his time in terms of how he viewed the World and the great potential (on an international, worldwide scope) for humanity. This kind of thinking combined with a practical effect on a mass scale has an unprecedented balanced “progressive” mindset regarding how we interact with each other, how we treat each other and how we view the World.

Good nutrition and regular exercise combine to offer more health per person than the sum of each part alone. We also know that physical activity has an effect on emotional and mental well-being. Much has been said about the effect physical activity has on various chemicals in our bodies, which in tum affect our moods and our concentration. And experiencing the rewards of feeling better emotionally and being more mentally alert provides the confidence and motivation to treat ourselves to optimal nutrition, which reinforces the entire cycle. Those who feel good about themselves are more likely to respect their health by practicing good nutrition. John Robbins has done more than any other person to bring this issue to the front of American consciousness, and I strongly recommend reading his most recent book, The Food Revolution. Our food choices have an incredible impact not only on our metabolism, but also on the initiation, promotion and even reversal of disease, on our energy; on our physical activity, on our emotional and mental well-being and on our world environment. All of these seemingly separate spheres are intimately interconnected. I have mentioned the wisdom of nature at various points in this book, and I have come to see the power of the workings of the natural world. It is a wondrous web of health, from molecules, to people, to other animals, to forests, to oceans, to the air we breathe. This is nature at work, from the microscopic to the macroscopic.

As we sat together on a mid-river boulder, the shadows crossed the water and the sun sank lower. We looked into each other’s eyes and talked about all the things we loved. I realized then that there was no turning back: I had fallen in love with Steve. As the sun set, we made our way back across the boulders before it got dark. “Nighttime is croc time,” Steve told me. “It’s important to get off the water before they are active and hunting.” Back in camp, Steve started cooking. I asked if I could help. He waved me off. “My trip, my treat,” he said. I sat with my lemonade and watched the river as it changed with darkness coming on, and enjoyed the smell of onions cooking and steaks frying. I could hear the soft flapping noise of the fruit bats overhead. At first there were just a few, then dozens, and finally hundreds, crossing above the crowns of paperbark trees and honey myrtles. In the last glimmer of light they looked surreal, spooky and beautiful, gliding across the darkening sky. I felt pleasantly tired, but Steve seemed more energized the longer we stayed in the bush. I would see it again and again over the years. This was where Steve belonged, and where he seemed most alive. We finished dinner, and Steve popped the dishes into the dishpan. “Right,” he said. “We’ll leave them to soak and come back to clean up later.” We jumped into the boat and headed back up the river. This was Steve’s favorite time. I hadn’t understood what he was doing on our first trip earlier that afternoon. He had memorized where he had seen the slides. While during the day we hadn’t spotted a single croc, almost immediately after getting on the water, Steve shone his spotlight across the inky blackness and picked up the red eye-shine of crocs. As we slowly idled the boat upstream, the red orbs would blink and then vanish as the crocodiles submerged on our approach. Suddenly I felt terribly exposed in the little dinghy. The beautiful melaleuca trees that had looked so spectacular during the day now hung eerily over the water, as their leaves dipped and splashed in the black water. Fish came alive too. Everything made more noise in the dark.

HMMs are at the heart of speech-recognition systems like Siri. In speech recognition, the hidden states are written words, the observations are the sounds spoken to Siri, and the goal is to infer the words from the sounds. The model has two components: the probability of the next word given the current one, as in a Markov chain, and the probability of hearing various sounds given the word being pronounced. (How exactly to do the inference is a fascinating problem that we’ll turn to after the next section.) Siri aside, you use an HMM every time you talk on your cell phone. That’s because your words get sent over the air as a stream of bits, and the bits get corrupted in transit. The HMM then figures out the intended bits (hidden state) from the ones received (observations), which it should be able to do as long as not too many bits got mangled. HMMs are also a favorite tool of computational biologists. A protein is a sequence of amino acids, and DNA is a sequence of bases. If we want to predict, for example, how a protein will fold into a 3-D shape, we can treat the amino acids as the observations and the type of fold at each point as the hidden state. Similarly, we can use an HMM to identify the sites in DNA where gene transcription is initiated and many other properties.

An objection was made that judging by what had already been done to me, if we proceeded some of us would most certainly be killed. And several others, each in their own language, countered that the way we were living here, the way we were treated, we might as well be dead already, that things couldn't get worse. Things can always get worse, someone yelled from the back, when you reach hell there is always another hell underneath.

The nuclear family is said to be the basic unit of society but is itself under extreme pressure. Divorce rates have soared. Divorce is a double whammy for kids because it creates competing attachments as well as attachment voids. Children naturally like all their working attachments to be under one roof. The togetherness of the parents enables them to satisfy their desire of closeness and contact with both simultaneously. Furthermore, many children are attached to their parents as a couple. When parents divorce, it becomes impossible to be close to both simultaneously, at least physically. Children who are more mature and have more fully developed attachments with their parents are better equipped to keep close to both even when they, the parents, are apart — to belong to both simultaneously, to love both simultaneously, and to be known by both simultaneously. But many children, even older ones, cannot manage this. Parents who compete with the other parent or treat the other parent as persona non grata place the child (or, more precisely, the child's attachment brain) in an impossible situation: to be close to one, the child must separate from the other, both physically and psychologically. Owing to the marital conflict that precedes divorce, attachment voids may develop long before the divorce happens. When parents lose each other's emotional support or become preoccupied with their relationship to each other, they become less accessible to their children. Deprived of emotional contact with adults, children turn to their peers. Also, under stressed circumstances, it is tempting for parents themselves to seek some relief from caregiving responsibility. One of the easiest ways of doing so is to encourage peer interaction. When children are with each other, they make fewer demands on us.

I don’t understand the Italian, but it’s obvious that they’re all fighting over him. The principessa wants Luca to have dinner here; Catia wants him to come back with us, as do all the other girls but Elisa, who wants him to carry her off in his car, treat her to a romantic dinner, and then, probably, propose. And Luca knows all of this; I glance at him, and see a complacent expression on his face as he takes his mother’s hand and kisses it, a gesture that brings more sighs from Kelly, Kendra, and Paige. Well, I’m never going to be like that with him, I promise myself. I take a step back till I’m leaning against the side of an armchair, watching the scene play out as if it had nothing to do with me. I’m never going to be part of a group of girls all vying to catch his attention, jumping up and down, practically screaming: Look at me, Luca! Look at me! The more I see that, the farther I’ll walk away from it. If Luca wants me, he’ll have to come and get me. And if he doesn’t--his oss. Brave words, I think sarcastically: even my vin santo tastes a little bitter going down, probably from the acid at the back of my throat, watching Luca flirt with the girls as he kisses them all goodbye on each cheek. Let’s see if you can stick to those brave words, Violet.

I knew they wouldn’t approve of me, despite the fact I was well off and successful. How I earned my money, and my lifestyle, were not up to their standards. Not to mention the ink that covered my arms – Ally had told me how much they disapproved of body art or anyone who didn’t conform to their narrow-minded world. I was also blunt, outspoken, disliked them for the way they treated my girl, and I didn’t care about their opinion. Wait until they got an eyeful of me. We were going to hate each other, but they were going to have to get used to me. Because I wasn’t going anywhere.

Day 1: Pain is one that lingers in the threshold between life and death and there is no escape from it. Day 2: Each and every night and day I welcome creativity and everything positive in my life. Day 3: As I become the new me I merge from this state feeling deeply and feel inspired knowing the kind of person that I can be. Day 4: With every breath I take each and every day, I allow the positivity to flow through me and to transform my life. Day 5: Each and every day I realize my full potential in a whole new way. Day 6: Using the laws of attraction I can gladly accept positive people into my life right at this moment. Day 7: Every moment of my life is filled with transformation and self-discovery of the kind of person that I can be. Day 8: Every day and every night I feel much stronger and much healthier in every way possible. Day 9: I am more mindful, centered and balanced with every breath I take every single day. Day 10: Every moment I can feel filled with the complete healing energies of the entire universe. Day 11: Every day I can feel myself becoming more aware and mindful of my talents through every movement and action that I make. Day 12: I am transforming and shifting my life in a positive way every single day. Day 13: Every moment I am breathing in positive and radiant energy while breathing out all of the negativity. Day 14:  Today I will treat people the same way that I would love to be treated even if I am having a bad day. Day 15: Today I will practice active listening skills without passing judgment or letting my feelings getting in the way. Day 16: My life is finally peaceful and I feel completely harmonious with the world. Day 17: I know that I am very much loved and well cared for. Day 18: I am a naturally kind person and I would love to help others using my kindness. Day 19: I am very happy and very healthy. Day 20: The very universe loves and supports me.

To this day, I regularly ask Karen if she is okay. That is our code language for, “Am I meeting your needs and desires? Is there anything I need to be doing that I’m not doing?” And she says the same to me. It is our regular opportunity to make sure we are both doing well and getting our needs met. When we ask if we are doing okay, we mean it. We make each other a priority and serve each other with joy. We don’t treat each other like a ball and chain we have to drag around. It is a joy to serve.

I want to believe that we can all agree that no human being deserves to die abandoned and alone. I want to believe that but in a world where people use drugs rather than go to a hospital where they've already been treated poorly, choose to die alone at home or next to a riverbank, I'm not so sure. America remains the only country on the planet where it's easier to get high than it is to get help. When crises pile on top of each other, humans tend to dissociate. It's hard to think about the climate crisis when you're worried about paying your electric bill. The more emotionally depleted we are, the more we revert to our lizard brains and the more inured we become to the suffering of others. 'I got traps that will hurt you and I will hunt you down.' Lizard brain warps our sense of self, it undercuts our health, and it literally turns us into victims of our own toxic individualism. 'Americans are drowning in the lack of grace, the lack of humility, the complete inability to assume well about others', my friend, the trauma expert, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, said.

The well-intentioned thinking of ignoring racial differences within the classroom or the family home is something that can naturally be what we turn to as educators and parents. Our moral compass and societal upbringing may have reinforced the idea that being “color-blind” and “treating all children the same” are ways of being fair, being consistent, and also honoring the child for who they are, not what they look like. During my practicum in training to become a certified schoolteacher, I distinctly remember my assigned mentor teacher telling me, “I don’t see differences in the classroom.” Although this may seem appropriate to pass onto others or adopt in one’s own philosophy of education, the reality is that by ignoring differences in children, we are erasing the very complexity and nuances that each child brings to the table.

In 1931, Japan went broke—i.e., it was forced to draw down its gold reserves, abandon the gold standard, and float its currency, which depreciated it so greatly that Japan ran out of buying power. These terrible conditions and large wealth gaps led to fighting between the left and the right. By 1932, there was a massive upsurge in right-wing nationalism and militarism, in the hope that order and economic stability could be forcibly restored. Japan set out to get the natural resources (e.g., oil, iron, coal, and rubber) and human resources (i.e., slave labor) it needed by seizing them from other countries, invading Manchuria in 1931 and spreading out through China and Asia. As with Germany, it could be argued that Japan’s path of military aggression to get needed resources was more cost-effective than relying on classic trading and economic practices. In 1934, there was severe famine in parts of Japan, causing even more political turbulence and reinforcing the right-wing, militaristic, nationalistic, and expansionistic movement. In the years that followed, Japan’s top-down fascist command economy grew stronger, building a military-industrial complex to protect its existing bases in East Asia and northern China and support its excursions into other countries. As was also the case in Germany, while most Japanese companies remained privately held, their production was controlled by the government. What is fascism? Consider the following three big choices that a country has to make when selecting its approach to governance: 1) bottom-up (democratic) or top-down (autocratic) decision making, 2) capitalist or communist (with socialist in the middle) ownership of production, and 3) individualistic (which treats the well-being of the individual with paramount importance) or collectivist (which treats the well-being of the whole with paramount importance). Pick the one from each category that you believe is optimal for your nation’s values and ambitions and you have your preferred approach. Fascism is autocratic, capitalist, and collectivist. Fascists believe that top-down autocratic leadership, in which the government directs the production of privately held companies such that individual gratification is subordinated to national success, is the best way to make the country and its people wealthier and more powerful.

There are two situations in which you can just be you: The first situation is when you’re alone in a room. Then it doesn’t matter how you speak or what you do. It doesn’t hurt anyone if you scream and swear or if you just want to sit silently and ponder the great mysteries of life or wonder why fashion models always look so mad. In your solitude, you can behave exactly the way you feel. Simple, isn’t it? The second situation where you can completely be yourself is when all the other people in the room are exactly like you. What did our mothers teach us? Treat others as you want to be treated. Excellent advice and very well intentioned. And it works, too—as long as everyone is just like you. All you need to do is make a list of all the people you know who believe, think, and act exactly like you in all situations. Now just give them a call and start hanging out.

Traits of a healthy relationship include the following: Each person is independent and makes life easier for the other, not harder. An idea of commitment is shared and agreed upon. Open communication is consistently evaluated and reprioritized. Each person’s strengths are appreciated and acknowledged. Each person clearly understands, acknowledges, and feels good about their role in the relationship. Each person feels valued and needed. Each person is respected and treated as sacred. Trust is paramount for all parties. Love and positive feedback are abundant.

A vague notion has developed that it is bad form to criticize someone's religion, and, by extension, religion in general. To be sure, those well informed in history can only look with bemused horror at how the devotees of one religion, for hundreds or thousands of years, persecuted the devotees of other religions, or even "heretics" within their own religion; and it certainly does seem absurd nowadays to engage in this kind of disputation, especially given that one religion is no more likely to be true than another. We are in an age of "toleration" and ecumenicalism-a somewhat paradoxical development, at least in the West, given that the scriptures of each of the major religions of Europe and the Middle East (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) clearly and unequivocally declares that it and it alone possesses the truth about God and the universe. But surely it is still a valid procedure to assess the truth-claims of any given religion or all religions, and to determine whether their scriptures do or do not provide accurate information about human beings, human society, or the universe at large. Religions themselves have craftily put forth this hands-off principle precisely in order to shield themselves from scrutiny by pestiferous critics. Listen again to H. L. Mencken: ... even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.... The meaning of religious freedom, I fear, is sometimes greatly misapprehended. It is taken to be a sort of immunity, not merely from governmental control but also from public opinion. A dunderhead gets himself a long-tailed coat, rises behind the sacred desk, and emits such bilge as would gag a Hottentot. Is it to pass unchallenged? If so, then what we have is not religious freedom at all, but the most intolerable and outrageous variety of religious despotism. Any fool, once he is admitted to holy orders, becomes infallible. Any half-wit, by the simple device of ascribing his delusions to revelation, takes on an authority that is denied to all the rest of us.

Lily Samson, The Switch, Outtakes & Quotes, shameless manipulation of. A one minute reading test I am dog --Dog, Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans, 2007 Allergies disclaimer: One must stress that this book is not intended for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I’ve created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a “Pavlovian” reaction to Elena’s BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I’m silent and trembling. ‘My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.’ I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer’s Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady’s knickers. Nope, she’s allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. A female of the human species displayed an unconditioned response: shoved cream cake into the courting male’s face. Requested a substantial meal of Shchavel Borscht with hard boiled egg --Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian Cookbook for Love, Romance, and mating behaviours: Humans, 1904 Ding-dong! --Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Neutral Triggers & Conditioned Responses: Canines, 1907 It is I! I make the best Byzantine shchi to entice a female. --Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Dead Souls, Notebook (1841-1844), The Nose and other short stories Right! She turned her nose up at his advances: Idiot! I hate strawberries! --Seraphima Vasilievna Karchevskaya Pavlova, Mrs, My Husband and I – Memoirs The lady did not have a sweet tooth. Man didn’t do his research. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don’t you like it? And then he “squirts onto her wrist, playfully.” Shhhh.. Doctors Pavlov & Chekhov are not amused. Shall we shuffle the deck with these random quotes? One minute! Plenty of time is a full minute for a skilled bullshit dealer to shuffle themselves out of a gloomy Russian medical clerical predicament. Not tricky when Lily Samson gives treats: All around us are dog walkers, their expensive breeds racing about, barking and sniffing each other’s genitals. ..thinking it all through those awful dog ornaments she hated... feisty feminist...she simply hates them. Men are so stupid! And then.. She took another whiff and yet another. She sniffed him up and down like a dog before realizing what it was: the aroma of a woman’s cunt. --Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being Gratuitous use of one particular French vulgarism nested in the English language since the Norman conquest of 1066 is well demonstrated by this Milan Kundera translation. One has to wonder if the original 1984 edition contained the word “pizda”? It is one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock. --Scholar Germaine Greer But of course a cunt, in French, as much as el coño in Spanish does not carry near enough as much uncouth weight as in English. The English language doesn’t exist. It’s just badly pronounced French. --Bernard Cerquiglini Quelle conne! Un con reste un con! --William Shakespeare, Last Words, Holy Trinity Church, Gropecunt Lane, Stratford upon Avon, April 23rd 1616

Now Where Do You Find Customers? When novice entrepreneurs search for opportunities, they too often look beyond their Zone of Influence. They think the action is happening somewhere else, in some other location or industry. But seasoned entrepreneurs almost always find and create opportunities within the context of who they are, what they know, and especially who they know. In each of the examples above, the business validation process begins with potential customers in the entrepreneur’s orbit. Actual people with names. Tribes you belong to or are interested in, most of whom are already self-organized online. People you know how to reach, today. Though it’s rarely a part of their official origin stories, the biggest companies in the world—even the viral apps now worth billions—started through personal networks and real human connections. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in a weekend by emailing friends to use it. Version 1 did well, validating it. And Microsoft started with Bill Gates building software for a guy in Albuquerque. He had a CUSTOMER FIRST. In the beginning, founders should reach out to their friends, their former colleagues, their communities. You may think your business is unique, but trust me, it’s not. Every successful business can start this way. For example, Anahita loves her dogs and wanted healthier snacks for them. She started taking her homemade organic dog treats to her local dog park. She would sell out every time. A year later she now has a store called the Barkery, a dog bakery. Before you even think about picking a business idea, make sure you have easy access to the people you want to help. An easy way to do this is to think about where you have easy access to a targeted group of people whom you really want to help—like, say, new moms in Austin, cyclists, freelance writers, and taco obsessives (like me!). CHALLENGE Top three groups. Let’s write out your top three groups to target. Who do you have easy access to that you’d be EXCITED to help? This can be your neighbors, colleagues, religious friends, golf buddies, cooking friends, etc. The better you understand your target group, the better you can speak to them. The more specifically you can speak to their problems, the better and easier you can sell (or test products). Note how this process prioritizes communication with people, through starting (taking the first iteration of your solution straight to customers) and asking (engaging them in a conversation to determine how your solution can best fix their problem). Business creation should always be a conversation! Nearly every impulse we have is to be tight with our ideas by doing more research, going off alone to build the perfect product—anything and everything to avoid the discomfort of asking for money. This is the validation shortcut. You have to learn to fight through this impulse. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it.

Because the priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppeteer. If God created our will, then he’s responsible for every choice we make. God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal—there’s no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.” “So—as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn’t exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of our behavior are so complex that we can’t trace them back. If you’ve got one line of dominoes knocking each other down one by one, then you can always say, Look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to.” “Bobagem,” said Miro. “Well, I admit that it’s a philosophy with no practical value,” said Ender. “Valentine once explained it to me this way. Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can’t punish him, because he can’t help it, because his genes or his environment or God made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can’t honor him, because he was a puppet, too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet, why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you.” “Despair,” said Miro. “So we conceive of ourselves and everyone around us as volitional beings. We treat everyone as if they did things with a purpose in mind, instead of because they’re being pushed from behind. We punish criminals. We reward altruists. We plan things and build things together. We make promises and expect each other to keep them. It’s all a made-up story, but when everybody believes that everybody’s actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization.” “Just a story.

the quality of our lives and the health of our society depends, to a large degree, on how well we treat each other in the minute interactions of daily life. And all these different skills rest on one foundational skill: the ability to understand what another person is going through. There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood. That is at the heart of being a good person, the ultimate gift you can give to others and to yourself.

Santhi Gems is a well-known gold buyer in Chennai that sets itself apart with exceptional services and a consistent commitment to customer loyalty. Santhi Gems has achieved a stellar reputation in the industry thanks to its straightforwardness, trustworthiness, and dependability, as well as its extensive history. This article delves into the key features that set Santhi Gems apart from other Chennai gold buyers, including its customer-focused approach, ethical practices, and extensive range of services. Research how Santhi Pearls' dedication to significance and genuineness go with it a leaned toward choice for those wanting to sell or credit against their gold assets in Chennai. 1. Introduction to Santhi Adornments' History and Foundation Santhi Gems, headquartered in Chennai, has been a trusted name in the gold purchasing industry for more than two decades. Santhi Gems has established a reputation for unwavering quality and authenticity thanks to a solid foundation built on trustworthiness and customer loyalty. Santhi Gems' mission and values are to provide customers with a straightforward and fair gold purchasing experience. Each partnership is guided by their genuine sincerity regarding the benefits, trust, and customer-centricity, ensuring that customers are treated with respect and consideration throughout the selling cycle. 2. Direct Assessing and Appraisal Communication Clear Valuation Procedures Selling Gold Jewelry Santhi Adornments provides a consistent and straightforward cycle for selling gold items, whether you want to branch out from your existing collection or update it. Their capable staff ensures that clients get fair motivator for their important effects. Gold Advance Offices Santhi Adornments offers gold advance offices in addition to buying gold gems, allowing customers to use their gold resources for financial assistance. They make it advantageous and secure to access reserves thanks to their flexible terms and competitive rates. 6. By placing an emphasis on client instruction, Santhi Adornments moves beyond value-based connections. They encourage customers to make educated decisions regarding their gold resources by providing experiences into the patterns of the gold market as well as advice on how to care for and maintain gold. Direction on Patterns in the Gold Market When managing valuable metals, it is essential to remain informed about the gold market. Santhi Gems ensures that customers are up to date on market trends, allowing them to make crucial decisions regarding gold investments or transactions. Tips for Taking Care of Gold Gems Proper care and attention can have a significant impact on their value and lifespan. Santhi Diamonds outfits clients with central hints on endlessly protecting their gold things, ensuring that they hold their greatness and shimmer for a seriously significant time-frame into what's in store. 7. Obligation to Follow Moral Principles The activities of Santhi Adornments are centered on following moral principles and being capable of doing so. They keep the advantages of uprightness and social responsibility in the gold business by focusing on fair exchange gold acquiring and implementing earth-manageable practices.

Hoping that you and life treat each other well,

Dharma Master Cheng Yen is a Buddhist nun living in Hualien County, a mountainous region on the east coast of Taiwan. Because the mountains formed barriers to travel, the area has a high proportion of indigenous people, and in the 1960s many people in the area, especially indigenous people, were living in poverty. Although Buddhism is sometimes regarded as promoting a retreat from the world to focus on the inner life, Cheng Yen took the opposite path. In 1966, when Cheng Yen was twenty-nine, she saw an indigenous woman with labor complications whose family had carried her for eight hours from their mountain village to Hualien City. On arriving they were told they would have to pay for the medical treatment she needed. Unable to afford the cost of treatment they had no alternative but to carry her back again. In response, Cheng Yen organized a group of thirty housewives, each of whom put aside a few cents each day to establish a charity fund for needy families. It was called Tzu Chi, which means “Compassionate Relief.” Gradually word spread, and more people joined.6 Cheng Yen began to raise funds for a hospital in Hualien City. The hospital opened in 1986. Since then, Tzu Chi has established six more hospitals. To train some of the local people to work in the hospital, Tzu Chi founded medical and nursing schools. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of its medical schools is the attitude shown to corpses that are used for medical purposes, such as teaching anatomy or simulation surgery, or for research. Obtaining corpses for this purpose is normally a problem in Chinese cultures because of a Confucian tradition that the body of a deceased person should be cremated with the body intact. Cheng Yen asked her volunteers to help by willing their bodies to the medical school after their death. In contrast to most medical schools, here the bodies are treated with the utmost respect for the person whose body it was. The students visit the family of the deceased and learn about his or her life. They refer to the deceased as “silent mentors,” place photographs of the living person on the walls of the medical school, and have a shrine to each donor. After the course has concluded and the body has served its purpose, all parts are replaced and the body is sewn up. The medical school then arranges a cremation ceremony in which students and the family take part. Tzu Chi is now a huge organization, with seven million members in Taiwan alone—almost 30 percent of the population—and another three million members associated with chapters in 51 countries. This gives it a vast capacity to help. After a major earthquake hit Taiwan in 1999, Tzu Chi rebuilt 51 schools. Since then it has done the same after disasters in other countries, rebuilding 182 schools in 16 countries. Tzu Chi promotes sustainability in everything it does. It has become a major recycler, using its volunteers to gather plastic bottles and other recyclables that are turned into carpets and clothing. In order to promote sustainable living as well as compassion for sentient beings all meals served in Tzu Chi hospitals, schools, universities, and other institutions are vegetarian.

By Lawrence Van Alstyne December 24, 1863 As tomorrow is Christmas we went out and made such purchases of good things as our purses would allow, and these we turned over to George and Henry for safe keeping and for cooking on the morrow. After that we went across the street to see what was in a tent that had lately been put up there. We found it a sort of show. There was a big snake in a showcase filled with cheap looking jewelry, each piece having a number attached to it. Also, a dice cup and dice. For $1.00 one could throw once, and any number of spots that came up would entitle the thrower to the piece of jewelry with a corresponding number on it. Just as it had all been explained to us, a greenhorn-looking chap came in and, after the thing had been explained to him, said he was always unlucky with dice, but if one of us would throw for him he would risk a dollar just to see how the game worked. Gorton is such an accommodating fellow I expected he would offer to make the throw for him, but as he said nothing, I took the cup and threw seventeen. The proprietor said it was a very lucky number, and he would give the winner $12 in cash or the fine pin that had the seventeen on it. The fellow took the cash, like a sensible man. I thought there was a chance to make my fortune and was going right in to break the bank, when Gorton, who was wiser than I, took me to one side and told me not to be a fool; that the greenhorn was one of the gang, and that the money I won for him was already his own. Others had come by this time and I soon saw he was right, and I kept out. We watched the game a while, and then went back to Camp Dudley and to bed. Christmas, and I forgot to hang up my stocking. After getting something to eat, we took stock of our eatables and of our pocket books, and found we could afford a few things we lacked. Gorton said he would invite his horse jockey friend, James Buchanan, not the ex-President, but a little bit of a man who rode the races for a living. So taking Tony with me I went up to a nearby market and bought some oysters and some steak. This with what we had on hand made us a feast such as we had often wished for in vain. Buchanan came, with his saddle in his coat pocket, for he was due at the track in the afternoon. George and Henry outdid themselves in cooking, and we certainly had a feast. There was not much style about it, but it was satisfying. We had overestimated our capacity, and had enough left for the cooks and drummer boys. Buchanan went to the races, Gorton and I went to sleep, and so passed my second Christmas in Dixie. At night the regiment came back, hungry as wolves. The officers mostly went out for a supper, but Gorton and I had little use for supper. We had just begun to feel comfortable. The regiment had no adventures and saw no enemy. They stopped at Baton Rouge and gave the 128th a surprise. Found them well and hearty, and had a real good visit. I was dreadfully sorry I had missed that treat. I would rather have missed my Christmas dinner. They report that Colonel Smith and Adjutant Wilkinson have resigned to go into the cotton and sugar speculation. The 128th is having a free and easy time, and according to what I am told, discipline is rather slack. But the stuff is in them, and if called on every man will be found ready for duty. The loose discipline comes of having nothing to do. I don’t blame them for having their fun while they can, for there is no telling when they will have the other thing. From Diary of an Enlisted Man by Lawrence Van Alstyne. New Haven, Conn., 1910.

Mr. Grattingly, while we might tarry in the conservatory in plain sight of the open door, the location you’ve chosen—ooph!” “The location I’ve chosen is perfect,” Grattingly said as he mashed his body against Louisa’s. He’d shoved her back against a tree, off the path, into the shadows. “Mr. Grattingly! How dare—” Wet lips landed on Louisa’s jaw, and the scent of wine-soured breath filled her head. “Of course, I dare. You all but begged me to drag you in here. With your tits nigh falling from your bodice, how do you expect a man to act?” He thrust his hand into the neckline of Louisa’s gown and closed his fingers around her breast. Louisa was too stunned for a moment to think, then something more powerful than fear came roaring forward. “You slimy, presuming, stinking, drunken, witless varlet!” She shoved against him hard, but he wasn’t budging, and those thick, wet lips were puckering up abominably. Louisa heard her brother Devlin’s voice in her head, instructing her to use her knee, when Grattingly abruptly shifted off her and landed on his bottom in the dirt. “Excuse me.” Sir Joseph stood not two feet away, casually unbuttoning his evening coat. His expression was as composed as his tone of voice, though even when he dropped his coat around Louisa’s shoulders, he kept his gaze on Grattingly. “I do hope I’m not interrupting.” “You’re not.” Louisa clutched his jacket to her shoulders, finding as much comfort in its cedary scent as she did in the body heat it carried. “Mr. Grattingly was just leaving.” “Who the hell are you,” Grattingly spat as he scrambled to his feet, “to come around and disturb a lady at her pleasures?” Somewhere down the path, a door swung closed. Louisa registered the sound distantly, the way she’d notice when rain had started outside though she was in the middle of a good book. Though this was not a good book. Instinctively Louisa knew she was, without warning or volition, in the middle of something not good at all. “I was not at my pleasures, you oaf.” She’d meant to fire the words off with a load of scathing indignation, but to Louisa’s horror, her voice shook. Her knees were turning unreliable on her, as well, so she sank onto the hard bench. “What’s going on here?” Lionel Honiton stood on the path, three or four other people gathered behind him. “Nothing,” Sir Joseph said. “The lady has developed a megrim and will be departing shortly.” “A megrim!” Grattingly was on his feet, though to Louisa it seemed as if he weaved a bit. “That bitch was about to get something a hell of a lot more—” Sir Joseph, like every other guest, was wearing evening gloves. They should not have made such a loud, distinct sound when thwacked across Grattingly’s jowls. Lionel stepped forth. “Let’s not be hasty. Grattingly, apologize. We can all see you’re a trifle foxed. Nobody takes offense at what’s said when a man’s in his cups, right?” “I’m not drunk, you ass. You—” “That’s not an apology.” Sir Joseph pulled on his gloves. “My seconds will be calling on yours. If some one of the assembled multitude would stop gawping long enough to fetch the lady’s sisters to her, I would appreciate it.” He said nothing more, just treated each member of the small crowd to a gimlet stare, until Lionel ushered them away. Nobody had a word for Grattingly, who stomped off in dirty breeches, muttering Louisa knew not what. Sir

Forced by the Starr investigation, the president was to give testimony on the Paula Jones case any day now. Somehow Matt Drudge and his website received a leak. In response the president had signed a subpoenaed affidavit, legally sworn testimony denying any sexual relations with Paula Jones, the low-level Arkansas state employee who had accused him of sexual harassment, and more so, any relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He said they didn’t have any contact with each other, hadn’t even been alone in the same room together. He swore to it and said others could corroborate. Monica Lewinsky signed another affidavit. Ken Starr had been following the Clintons like a bloodhound. But at each turn of each scandal (Whitewater, Vince Foster’s suicide, Travelgate, Filegate, the affairs, the bribes, Troopergate, and more) it all came down to deny-deny-deny and the Clintons’ word against everyone else’s. Only this time, Clinton arrogantly denied his affair with Monica on a legal affidavit, sworn testimony. The shit was hitting the fan. Ken Starr now needed to prove Clinton was a liar—a perjurer. He needed evidence. Since they subpoenaed our logbook, I knew I was on Starr’s list. I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t drive anymore. My partner asked me what was wrong. I can remember the feeling, my heart racing, my mind whirling, racked with pain, doubt, remorse, and regret. Oh my God, Starr, the Clintons, the Service, the FBI, the Justice Department, my friends, my family—no, not my friends and family—but everyone is going to implicate me, my integrity, my professionalism, my ethics, my foundation, my character. What about Genny and my unborn child? I didn’t sign up for this! We never signed up for this! Why did the Clintons have to do this to us? Haven’t I treated them well, done my best? They just couldn’t do the right thing! They couldn’t stop themselves!

It’s funny how things work out,” she said, wrapping her arms around the dog and squeezing her tight. “All this time we spent hating each other when we could have spent it--” “Together.” Jeremy kneeled beside the dog and looked directly at Madison. “I guess that’s irony to the tenth power.” His mention of irony and math reminded her that he not only was Jeremy, but he was also her Heart-2-Heart pal, Blue. And only two hours before, she had stood him up. Madison didn’t know how to bring it up. If she confessed to being Pinky, would it look like another conspiracy to make a fool out of him? She couldn’t decide. Jeremy’s face was inches from hers. She could see little gold flecks in his eyes. Yes, he definitely was weak-in-the-knees handsome. She managed to murmur, “I guess we’re older now and, well, you have that girlfriend.” Jeremy’s face reddened, and he looked down at his dog. “Um, I’m not so sure about that,” he admitted, embarrassed. “I was supposed to meet her at the Space Needle today, but she never showed.” Madison’s heart ached seeing him look so defeated. She wanted to blurt everything out right then, but something made her keep her secret. Instead, she said, “Well, it may have been a big misunderstanding. I mean, there I was, following you around and screaming like a lunatic. She may have thought we meant something to each other.” Jeremy laughed. “That would be pretty ridiculous, wouldn’t it?” “Maybe you should call her,” Madison said, knowing he didn’t know “Pinky’s” phone number. “Or write her and explain.” Jeremy nodded briskly. “I’ll do that.” They sat for a few moments in awkward silence. Finally, Madison clapped her hands together. “In the meantime, we have another big problem on our hands.” “You’re right,” Jeremy agreed. “I’m thirsty. What do you say we go for a Coke at Ruby’s favorite watering hole? My treat.” At the mention of her name, Ruby leaped to her feet, wagging her tail. Madison chuckled. “I’m up for that. And while we’re at it, we can figure out what to do about Reed Rawlings.

Ear Oil This is the remedy that I used on my own children and grandchildren when they would, as children do, wake up with an ear infection. I learned it from my grandmother, who, I’m sure, learned it from her grandmother. Hopefully, my grandchildren will remember and pass it on to their grandchildren. It is truly one of the best remedies for ear infections associated with colds and respiratory congestion. (It is not effective and shouldn’t be used for “swimmer’s ear” and other instances where the infection is caused by water entering the ear.) The garlic fights the infection, and the warm oil is soothing and helps relieve the pain. Of course, if the ear infection doesn’t improve with the garlic oil treatment within 24 hours, or if it gets worse, a trip to your family health-care provider is in order. Quickly. Don’t let ear infections go untreated, as they can result in a perforated eardrum and permanent hearing loss. 1–2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced 2 tablespoons olive oil To make the oil: Combine the garlic and olive oil in the top of a double boiler. Warm over very low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the oil smells strongly of garlic. Use a stainless-steel strainer lined with cheesecloth to strain out the garlic. Strain well; no garlic pieces, no matter how tiny, should be left in the oil. Pour the strained oil into a small glass dropper bottle. Store in a cool pantry or closet, where the oil will keep for several weeks, or in the refrigerator, where it will keep for several months. To use: Each time you use the oil, it needs to be warmed; just place the dropper bottle in a pan of hot water until the oil is, say, the warmth of mother’s milk. Be sure the oil is warm, not hot. If in doubt, do a test drop in your own ear. Dispense a dropperful of the warm garlic oil down each ear. The ear canals are connected and the infection can move back and forth, so always treat both ears. If possible, hold a warm, dry cloth over the ears after applying the oil, and/or gently massage around the ears. Repeat every 30 minutes, or as needed until pain subsides.

Perhaps there’s something inside her we haven’t seen yet.” The delicate comb clinked on the stone, and she started to pull Evie’s hair into loose strands. “That’s the way it is with people, you know. When I was a girl, my mother died quite unexpectedly. She meant the world to me. To my father as well. But in his grief, he consented to marry another. She was a dreadful woman, and her dreadful daughters became my stepsisters. They lived to torment me. Each morning I’d wake and wonder what I’d done to make them hate me so. Eventually I came to see that I hadn’t done anything at all. Something somewhere in their lives had hurt them—I could see that even if they couldn’t—and I made up my mind to treat them decently, as others so clearly hadn’t.” Evie studied her in the mirror. She could live to be a thousand years old and she’d never be as kind as Hazelbranch. It seemed to come naturally, as though it was a part of her, like hair or skin. “Each of us is blessed with the ability to control our own decisions,” she continued, “but cursed with the inability to control the decisions of others. I couldn’t do a thing about the way they treated me, but I got to choose the way I treated them. And do you know what happened? As we grew into adulthood, one of those wicked stepsisters became the best friend I’ve ever had.” Evie scowled and looked to the floor. She had no interest in being the bigger person. She despised Malora, and was comfortable in her anger. “It isn’t fair. Of all the people here . . .” “Life isn’t fair, Evie. It never has been and it never will be. You can sit back and moan about its unfairness while the witches roll across the countryside, or you can pick yourself up and get on with it.

Listen, I have to tell you something.” Her drowsy eyes opened. “I don’t want to push you into anything, take your time about me, but you have to know—I feel pretty strongly about monogamy.” Her eyes widened. “You can’t think I’d be with another man! I wasn’t even going to be with you! But there is one thing you have to do for me,” she said. “Anything that makes you happy,” he promised. “I want this to be only between us.” “Sure. Of course. It’s personal. I agree.” “I don’t want anyone around here to know it’s like this between us. I just work for you, that’s all.” He frowned. “We don’t have to share our personal lives with anyone, but we don’t have to hide the fact that we care about each other.” “Yeah, we do, Noah. No one can know about this. About us.” “Ellie, why? Are you embarrassed to find yourself attracted to a man who’s a minister?” She laughed a little bit. “No. But no one would ever believe you seduced me. And you did, Noah. You did and I loved it. Not only are you the sexiest minister alive, you might be the sexiest man alive. But people will think I trapped you. They’ll think I ruined your purity and dirtied you up. And I don’t need that right now.” “Come on, you’re wrong…” “I’m right,” she said. “No matter how much I try to do the right thing, no matter how determined I am to do the right thing, everything that happens ends up being my fault. And when people around here find out you like me…they’re going to think I cast an evil spell on you and made you break your vows.” “Honey, I didn’t take a vow of chastity. I didn’t promise not to love a woman. I never said I wouldn’t have a perfectly normal sex drive. I’m not fifteen, Ellie, I’m thirty-five and I’ve missed passion. Passion and intimacy, two things that are really healthy for a normal man. Don’t argue with a man with seven years of theological training.” “People don’t get that about you like I do. They think of you as different. As a minister. Please, Noah. Let’s just act like I work for you, and that we’re casual friends.” “We can do that, if that’s what you need. Or we could change the way things have been for you. We could be honest without being indiscreet. We could hold hands, you could let me put my arm around your shoulders, smile at you like you’re special. Treat you like the woman of my choice while I enjoy being the man of yours.” “You don’t get it, do you, Noah?” she asked, shaking her head. “Don’t you see how fragile this is? How much hangs in the balance for both of us? At some point—maybe sooner, maybe later—the people here are going to figure me out. They’ll know I come from a dirt-poor background, that the men who gave me my children didn’t marry me, that I was a stripper when you hired me. What if they hate me? What if they treat my kids like trash because of me?” “I won’t let anyone—” “Don’t you see it’s your future in this town, too? What if they ask themselves what kind of minister you could be if you’d choose a woman like me? Oh, Noah,” she said, running her fingers through his thick, dark hair. “We’d get along okay in a bigger town where no one knows us all that well, where I’m not hooked up with the local preacher. But here—you and me? It could ruin us all.” “No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not going to be that way.” She smiled at him. “You’re just a fool,” she said. “It usually is that way.” He