Turned 2 Years Old Quotes

Inside the house, I turned on the kitchen light, revealing the photographs stuck every which way all over the cabinets, and then switched on the hall light. In my head, I heard Beck say to my small nine-year-old self, 'Why do we need every light in the house on? Are you signaling to aliens?

My name is Bear. I am a reluctant homosexual (or, at least, I resemble one). My boyfr—er, life partner (gag!), is apparently like a forty-year-old woman, and his biological clock is exploding all over the place, and we don’t know how to turn off the alarm. We need a woman (ha!) to allow us to put our sperm into her so that we can create the miracle that is life! You, as the surrogate, must not be crazy!!!!!

Had I catalogued the downsides of parenthood, "son might turn out to be a killer" would never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like this: 1. Hassle. 2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.) 3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid's insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.) 4. Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister-in-law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn't say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.) 5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I'm a pig.) 6. Curtailment of my traveling. (Note curtailment. Not conclusion.) 7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.) 8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend's five-year-old in the room.) 9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew--every woman, too, which is depressing--would take me less seriously.) 10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother would feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.)

And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces. Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee--but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.

I decide that society is right, that some people are too far gone, that sometimes you can't turn back, that there are people in this world who don't deserve a second chance and I can't I can't I can't I can't help but disagree. I can't help but think that 19 is too young to give up on someone, that 19 years old is just the beginning, that it's too soon to tell anyone they will never amount to anything but evil in this world. I can't help but wonder what my life would've been like if someone had taken a chance on me.

Michael turned from the counter with a cup of coffee in hand. "Don't start," he said to Gabriel."I didn't say anything. I'm just glad you weren't jerking her around." Gabriel paused. "So I guess you don't have too much baggage after all?" Michael gave him a look. "Trust me I do." He sat down at the table. "She just has enough to mach." "What does that mean?" "It means she has a five-year-old son." Gabriel went still. "Holy crap." "So we're taking things really slowly." "Looks like it." This was quite possibly the first time Gabriel had ever seen his older brother blush. "It was late. She slept here. We did not-" Michael broke off. "I don't really think I need to explain myself to you." Gabriel smiled and took a sip of coffee. "No, no, I'm enjoying this.

Ren exhaled heavily. “God, you’re so annoying.” “So?” Tink hovered in front of the couch, his wings furiously beating the air. “I’m rubber and you’re glue!” Ren turned to face the little guy. “What?” “Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!” Ren stared at him and then slowly shook his head as he turned back to me. “It’s like living with a two-year-old with the mental capacity of a fifteen-year-old boy.

Her guardian sighed and looked back down at his book. "I can't tell you how much I look forward to these mature and scintillating conversations. Still, when the old Ari pays a visit, let me know." "Old Ari? I was sarcastic to you before." "True." He nodded, turning the page on the paperback. "But there was this era bewteen scared, sarcastic Ari and this new-fangled five year old Ari where you were actually a decent person to be around." Ouch. "Bite me." Jai grinned slyly and looked up at her from under his lashes. "Just tell me how hard.

I enjoyed it.” And there it was. I said it and waited. “I know,” he said. “After you killed the skull mage, you turned to me and you were smiling. A big, bright smile. Old Kate smile.” “Old Kate?” “Dangerous Kate. Stabby Kate. My Kate.” I raised my head and leaned it on my bent elbow. “Stabby?” “Yes. Exciting.” He grinned.

The point is, it didn’t even look like my face. It was the face of any twenty-four-year-old guy who might have been sitting across the way on the commuter train. My face, my self, what would they mean to anybody? Just another stiff. So this self of mine passes some other’s self on the street – what do weh ave to say to each other? Hey there! Hi ya!That’s about it. Nobody raises a hand. No one turns around to take another look.

He wants to feel good, he always used to feel good at every turning of the year, every vacation or end of vacation, every new sheet on the calendar: but his adult life has proved to have no seasons, only changes of weather, and the older he gets, the less weather interests him. The house next to his old house still has the FOR SALE sign up. He tries his front door

Keep his mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him, and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the state of his own mind--or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties of directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate the most useful human characteristics, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office. 2. It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very 'spiritual', that is is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rhuematism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards are her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother--the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment's notice from impassioned prayer for a wife's or son's soul to beating or insulting the real wife or son without any qualm. 3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face whice are almost unedurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy--if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbablity of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed.

INT. DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS CLASS—FOURTEEN YEARS PREVIOUSLY—DAY It is Boggart time. DUMBLEDORE supervises the line of teenagers advancing to try their luck. “Riddikulus”—“Riddikulus”—gusts of hilarity as a shark becomes a flotation device, a zombie’s head turns into a pumpkin, a vampire turns into a buck-toothed rabbit. DUMBLEDORE: All right, Newt. Be brave. 16-YEAR-OLD NEWT moves to the front of the queue. The Boggart turns into a Ministry desk. DUMBLEDORE: Mmm, that’s an unusual one. So Mr. Scamander fears what more than anything else in the world? 16-YEAR-OLD NEWT: Having to work in an office, sir. The class roars with laughter. DUMBLEDORE: Go ahead, Newt. 16-YEAR-OLD NEWT: Riddikulus! NEWT turns the desk into a gamboling wooden dragon and moves aside. DUMBLEDORE: Well done. Good job.

At some point in this course, perhaps even tonight, you will read something difficult, something you only partially understand, and your verdict will be this is stupid. Will I argue when you advance that opinion in class the next day? Why would I do such a useless ting? My time with you in short, only thirty-four weeks of classes, and I will not waste it arguing about the merits of this short story or that poem. Why would I, when all such opinions are subjective, and no final resolution can ever be reached?' Some of the kids - Gloria was one of them - now looked lost, but Pete understood exactly what Mr. Ricker, aka Ricky the Hippie, was talking about... 'Time is the answer," Mr Ricker said on the first day of Pete's sophomore year. He strode back and forth, antique bellbottoms swishing, occasionally waving his arms. "Yes! Time mercilessly culls away the is-stupid from the not-stupid." ... "It will occur for you, young ladies and gentlemen, although I will be in your rear-view mirror by the time it happens. Shall I tell you how it happens? You will read something - perhaps 'Dulce et Decorum Est,' by Wilfred Owen. Shall we use that as an example? Why not?' Then, in a deeper voice that sent chills up Pete's back and tightened his throat, Mr. Ricker cried, " 'Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge...' And son on. Cetra-cetra. Some of you will say, This is stupid." .... 'And yet!" Up went the finger. "Time will pass! Tempus will fugit! Owen's poem may fall away from your mind, in which case your verdict of is-stupid will have turned out to be correct. For you, at least. But for some of you, it will recur. And recur. Each time it does, the steady march of your maturity will deepen its resonance. Each time that poem sneaks back into your mind, it will seem a little less stupid and a little more vital. A little more important. Until it shines, young ladies and gentlemen. Until it shines.

The citizens of the Capitol have been drooling over him ever since. Because of his youth, they couldn’t really touch him for the first year or two. But ever since he turned sixteen, he’s spent his time at the Games being dogged by those desperately in love with him. No one retains his favour for long. He can go through four or five in his annual visit. Old or young, lovely or plain, rich or very rich, he’ll keep them company and take their extravagant gifts, but he never stays, and once he’s gone he never comes back.

Sign O' The Times Oh yeah In France a skinny man Died of a big disease with a little name By chance his girlfriend came across a needle And soon she did the same At home there are seventeen-year-old boys And their idea of fun Is being in a gang called The Disciples High on crack, totin' a machine gun Time, time Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling of a church And killed everyone inside U turn on the telly and every other story Is tellin' U somebody died Sister killed her baby cuz she could afford 2 feed it And we're sending people 2 the moon In September my cousin tried reefer 4 the very first time Now he's doing horse, it's June Times, times It's silly, no? When a rocket ship explodes And everybody still wants 2 fly Some say a man ain't happy Unless a man truly dies Oh why Time, time Baby make a speech, Star Wars fly Neighbors just shine it on But if a night falls and a bomb falls Will anybody see the dawn Time, times It's silly, no? When a rocket blows And everybody still wants 2 fly Some say a man ain't happy, truly Until a man truly dies Oh why, oh why, Sign O the Times Time, time Sign O the Times mess with your mind Hurry before it's 2 late Let's fall in love, get married, have a baby We'll call him Nate... if it's a boy Time, time Time, time

1 The summer our marriage failed we picked sage to sweeten our hot dark car. We sat in the yard with heavy glasses of iced tea, talking about which seeds to sow when the soil was cool. Praising our large, smooth spinach leaves, free this year of Fusarium wilt, downy mildew, blue mold. And then we spoke of flowers, and there was a joke, you said, about old florists who were forced to make other arrangements. Delphiniums flared along the back fence. All summer it hurt to look at you. 2 I heard a woman on the bus say, “He and I were going in different directions.” As if it had something to do with a latitude or a pole. Trying to write down how love empties itself from a house, how a view changes, how the sign for infinity turns into a noose for a couple. Trying to say that weather weighed down all the streets we traveled on, that if gravel sinks, it keeps sinking. How can I blame you who kneeled day after day in wet soil, pulling slugs from the seedlings? You who built a ten-foot arch for the beans, who hated a bird feeder left unfilled. You who gave carrots to a gang of girls on bicycles. 3 On our last trip we drove through rain to a town lit with vacancies. We’d come to watch whales. At the dock we met five other couples—all of us fluorescent, waterproof, ready for the pitch and frequency of the motor that would lure these great mammals near. The boat chugged forward—trailing a long, creamy wake. The captain spoke from a loudspeaker: In winter gray whales love Laguna Guerrero; it’s warm and calm, no killer whales gulp down their calves. Today we’ll see them on their way to Alaska. If we get close enough, observe their eyes—they’re bigger than baseballs, but can only look down. Whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles—but it’s my guess they’re all saying, Can you hear me? His laughter crackled. When he told us Pink Floyd is slang for a whale’s two-foot penis, I stopped listening. The boat rocked, and for two hours our eyes were lost in the waves—but no whales surfaced, blowing or breaching or expelling water through baleen plates. Again and again you patiently wiped the spray from your glasses. We smiled to each other, good troopers used to disappointment. On the way back you pointed at cormorants riding the waves— you knew them by name: the Brants, the Pelagic, the double-breasted. I only said, I’m sure whales were swimming under us by the dozens. 4 Trying to write that I loved the work of an argument, the exhaustion of forgiving, the next morning, washing our handprints off the wineglasses. How I loved sitting with our friends under the plum trees, in the white wire chairs, at the glass table. How you stood by the grill, delicately broiling the fish. How the dill grew tall by the window. Trying to explain how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time, how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying to describe the ways sex darkens and dies, how two bodies can lie together, entwined, out of habit. Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire, on an old couch that no longer reassures. The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest and found ourselves in fog so thick our lights were useless. There’s no choice, you said, we must have faith in our blindness. How I believed you. Trying to imagine the road beneath us, we inched forward, honking, gently, again and again.

23 Emotions people feel, but can’t explain 1.    Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own. 2.    Opia: The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable. 3.    Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place. 4.    Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self. 5.    Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops. 6.    Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat. 7.    Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet. 8.    Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like. 9.    Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head. 10.    Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm. 11.    Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist. 12.    Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening 13.    Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out. 14.    Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence. 15.    Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire. 16.    Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it. 17.    Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone. 18.    Rückkehrunruhe: The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness. 19.    Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore. 20.    Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time. 21.    Liberosis: The desire to care less about things. 22.    Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years. 23.    Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective. John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Simon & Schuster, November 16, 2021)

The night before I left on the sealed bullet train, I reread my old diary, and then I knew what the Gardeners meant when they said, Be careful what you write. There were my own words from the time when I was so happy, except that now it was torture to read them. I took the diary down the street and around the corner and shoved it into a garboil dumpster. It would turn into oil and then all those red hearts I’d drawn would go up in smoke, but at least they would be useful along the way.

I was robbed, Errin.” He strokes my face with his thumb before turning it back to him. “Of my life. Of my inheritance. Snuffed out at barely twenty-two years old. I have spent five hundred years asleep. I woke to nothing. The legacy my family spent generations building is ash, scattered to the wind. I was promised a kingdom,” he snarls. “I was promised the greatest kingdom the world had ever known. And I will have one. If it means cobbling one together from the ruins of Lormere and Tregellan.

Many of the first 2,000 or so nights of my life ended in civil disobedience: crying, begging, bargaining, until—on night 2,193, the night I turned six years old—I discovered direct action. The authorities weren’t interested in calls for reform, and I wasn’t born yesterday.

... they walked to the Mahamega grove in the centre of which was a sacred, thousand-five-hundred-year-old Bodhi tree. Bhikshus, devotees and many others were circumambulating the tree, offering flowers to it and paying it obeisance. The Prince paid his respects to it. He said to the other two, “Kings and kingdoms disappear but this tree is proof that righteousness is eternal.” Looking around, he saw three grooms holding horses that were ready to start out. He went up to them and the grooms greeted him joyfully. He asked them something then turned to Vandiyathevan. “The palace which was burnt down last night was Mahasena's. These people were afraid that we might have been burnt too. They are extremely happy to see us.” “It might be true that a thousand-five-hundred-year-old tree still stands. But righteousness has long been dead,” said Vandiyathevan.

The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, is a city consecrated to the worship of a father-son dynasty. (I came to think of them, with their nuclear-family implications, as 'Fat Man and Little Boy.') And a river runs through it. And on this river, the Taedong River, is moored the only American naval vessel in captivity. It was in January 1968 that the U.S.S. Pueblo strayed into North Korean waters, and was boarded and captured. One sailor was killed; the rest were held for nearly a year before being released. I looked over the spy ship, its radio antennae and surveillance equipment still intact, and found photographs of the captain and crew with their hands on their heads in gestures of abject surrender. Copies of their groveling 'confessions,' written in tremulous script, were also on show. So was a humiliating document from the United States government, admitting wrongdoing in the penetration of North Korean waters and petitioning the 'D.P.R.K.' (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) for 'lenience.' Kim Il Sung ('Fat Man') was eventually lenient about the men, but not about the ship. Madeleine Albright didn't ask to see the vessel on her visit last October, during which she described the gruesome, depopulated vistas of Pyongyang as 'beautiful.' As I got back onto the wharf, I noticed a refreshment cart, staffed by two women under a frayed umbrella. It didn't look like much—one of its three wheels was missing and a piece of brick was propping it up—but it was the only such cart I'd see. What toothsome local snacks might the ladies be offering? The choices turned out to be slices of dry bread and cups of warm water. Nor did Madeleine Albright visit the absurdly misnamed 'Demilitarized Zone,' one of the most heavily militarized strips of land on earth. Across the waist of the Korean peninsula lies a wasteland, roughly following the 38th parallel, and packed with a titanic concentration of potential violence. It is four kilometers wide (I have now looked apprehensively at it from both sides) and very near to the capital cities of both North and South. On the day I spent on the northern side, I met a group of aging Chinese veterans, all from Szechuan, touring the old battlefields and reliving a war they helped North Korea nearly win (China sacrificed perhaps a million soldiers in that campaign, including Mao Anying, son of Mao himself). Across the frontier are 37,000 United States soldiers. Their arsenal, which has included undeclared nuclear weapons, is the reason given by Washington for its refusal to sign the land-mines treaty. In August 1976, U.S. officers entered the neutral zone to trim a tree that was obscuring the view of an observation post. A posse of North Koreans came after them, and one, seizing the ax with which the trimming was to be done, hacked two U.S. servicemen to death with it. I visited the ax also; it's proudly displayed in a glass case on the North Korean side.

Hadrian walked over to where the boys were fighting and sat on the grass near Denek to watch. Denek, who was only twelve years old, glanced at him curiously. “Who are you?” “My name is Hadrian,” he replied as he extended his hand. The boy shook it, squeezing harder than was necessary. “You’re Denek, right? The Pickerings’ third son? Perhaps you should speak with my friend Myron, seeing as how I hear you are monastery-bound.” “Am not!” he shouted. “Going to the monastery, I mean. I can fight as well as Fanen.” “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hadrian said. “Fanen is flat-footed, and his balance is off. He’s not going to improve much either, because Mauvin is teaching him, and Mauvin is favoring his right and rocks back on his left too much.” Denek grinned at Hadrian and then turned to his brothers. “Hadrian says you both fight like girls!” “What’s that?” Mauvin said, whacking aside Fanen’s loose attack once more. “Oh, ah, nothing,” Hadrian said, trying to recant, and glared at Denek, who just kept grinning. “Thanks a lot,” he told the boy.

Few things are harder to visualise than that a cold snowbound landscape, so marrow-chillingly quiet and lifeless, will, within mere months, be green and lush and warm, quivering with all manner of life, from birds warbling and flying through the trees to swarms of insects hanging in scattered clusters in the air. Nothing in the winter landscape presages the scent of sun-warmed heather and moss, trees bursting with sap and thawed lakes ready for spring and summer, nothing presages the feeling of freedom that can come over you when the only white that can be seen is the clouds gliding across the blue sky above the blue water of the rivers gently flowing down to the sea, the perfect, smooth, cool surface, broken now and then by rocks, rapids and bathing bodies. It is not there, it does not exist, everything is white and still, and if the silence is broken it is by a cold wind or a lone crow caw-cawing. But it is coming ... it is coming... One evening in March the snow turns to rain, and the piles of snow collapse. One morning in April there are buds on the trees, and there is a trace of green in the yellow grass. Daffodils appear, white and blue anemones too. Then the warm air stands like a pillar among the trees on the slopes. On sunny inclines buds have burst, here and there cherry trees are in blossom. If you are sixteen years old all of this makes an impression, all of this leaves its mark, for this is the first spring you know is spring, with all your sense you know this is spring, and it is the last, for all coming springs pale in comparison with your first. If, moreover, you are in love, well, then ... then it is merely a question of holding on. Holding on to all the happiness, all the beauty, all the future that resides in everything.

With the veil removed by the rending of Jesus' flesh, with nothing on God's side to prevent us from entering, why do we tarry without? Why do we consent to abide all our days just outside the Holy of Holies and never enter at all to look upon God? We hear the Bridegroom say, `Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice and thy countenance is comely.' (Song of Sol 2:14) We sense that the call is for us, but still we fail to draw near, and the years pass and we grow old and tired in the outer courts of the tabernacle. What doth hinder us? The answer usually given, simply that we are `cold,' will not explain all the facts. There is something more serious than coldness of heart, something that may be back of that coldness and be the cause of its existence. What is it? What but the presence of a veil in out hearts? A veil not taken away as the first veil was, but which remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It is the veil of our fleshly fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. It is the close- woven veil of the self-life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we have never brought to the judgment of the cross. It is not too mysterious, this opaque veil, nor is it hard to identify. We have but to look in our own hearts and we shall see it there, sewn and patched and repaired it may be, but there nevertheless, an enemy to our lives and an effective block to our spiritual progress. This veil is not a beautiful thing and it is not a thing about which we commonly care to talk, but I am addressing the thirsting souls who are determined to follow God, and I know they will not turn back because the way leads temporarily through the blackened hills. The urge of God within them will assure their continuing the pursuit. They will face the facts however unpleasant and endure the cross for the joy set before them. So I am bold to mane the threads out of which this inner veil is woven. It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit. They are not something we do, they are something we are, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power.

The longevity genes I work on are called “sirtuins,” named after the yeast SIR2 gene, the first one to be discovered. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, SIRT1 to SIRT7, and they are made by almost every cell in the body. When I started my research, sirtuins were barely on the scientific radar. Now this family of genes is at the forefront of medical research and drug development. Descended from gene B in M. superstes, sirtuins are enzymes that remove acetyl tags from histones and other proteins and, by doing so, change the packaging of the DNA, turning genes off and on when needed. These critical epigenetic regulators sit at the very top of cellular control systems, controlling our reproduction and our DNA repair. After a few billion years of advancement since the days of yeast, they have evolved to control our health, our fitness, and our very survival. They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young.

She went around reading everything- the directions on the grits bag, Tate's notes, and the stories from her fairy-tale books she had pretended to read for years. Then one night she made a little oh sound, and took the old Bible from the shelf. Sitting at the table, she turned the thin pages carefully to the one with the family names. She found her own at the very bottom: There it was, her birthday: Miss Catherine Danielle Clark, October 10, 1945. Then, going back up the list, she read the real names of her brothers and sisters: Master Jeremy Andrew Clark, January 2, 1939. "Jeremy," she said out loud. "Jodie, I sure never thought a' you as Master Jeremy." Miss Amanda Margaret Clark, May 17, 1937. Kya touched the name with her fingers. Repeated it several times. She read on. Master Napier Murphy Clark, April 14, 1936. Kya spoke softly, "Murph, ya name was Napier." At the top, the oldest, Miss Mary Helen Clark, September 19, 1934. She rubbed her fingers over the names again, which brought faces before her eyes. They blurred, but she could see them all squeezed around the table eating stew, passing cornbread, even laughing some. She was ashamed that she had forgotten their names, but now that she'd found them, she would never let them go again. Above the list of children she read: Mister Jackson Henry Clark married Miss Julienne Maria Jacques, June 12, 1933. Not until that moment had she known her parents' proper names. She sat there for a few minutes with the Bible open on the table. Her family before her. Time ensures children never know their parents young. Kya would never see the handsome Jake swagger into an Asheville soda fountain in early 1930, where he spotted Maria Jacques, a beauty with black curls and red lips, visiting from New Orleans.

Because of his youth, they couldn’t really touch him for the first year or two. But ever since he turned sixteen, he’s spent his time at the Games being dogged by those desperately in love with him. No one retains his favor for long. He can go through four or five in his annual visit. Old or young, lovely or plain, rich or very rich, he’ll keep them company and take their extravagant gifts, but he never stays, and once he’s gone he never comes back.

The Scythe I created has been used for unspeakable crimes. Infected children have been hunted—killed. Physicians have turned to murderers. The Old Book of Alders has been defiled by Rowans to justify their every whim. Pain is Blunder’s legacy. It has perforated the kingdom for centuries, and would continue to do so if your family—my rightful heirs—were to forcibly take it back. There would be terrible unrest. You and I are Blunder’s reckoning, Ravyn Yew. Not its peace.” His voice softened, as if he were easing a child to rest with a story. “I had five hundred years to imagine my revenge. Hauth Rowan tasted it, that night at Spindle House. But poetry is as judicious as violence. And wouldn’t it be poetic to undo the Rowans from within? To take that legacy of pain, and watch one of their own grind it under his heel? To carve the way for a Prince who never used the Scythe for violence? Your cousin Elm has done more than Brutus Rowan or I ever could. He has looked pain in the eye—and refused to let it make a monster of him.

Noah turned to face his younger sister, arching one brow to a fairly smug height. Lenga lifted a brow back at him, giving him a delicate smattering of applause. “And I was afraid you would never learn the art of diplomacy,” she remarked, her lips twitching with her humor. “It merely took you the entire two and a half centuries of my life. Longer, actually. You had a few centuries’ head start.” “Funny how you seem to recall the fact that I am far older than you only when it suits your arguments, my sister,” he taunted her, reaching to tug on her hair as he had been doing since her childhood. “Well, I can say with all honesty that this is the first time I have ever seen you forgo a good argument with Hannah, opting for peace instead. I was beginning to wonder if you were my brother at all. Perhaps some imposter . . .” “Legna, be careful. You are speaking words of treason,” he teased her, tugging her hair once more, making her turn around to swat at his hand. “I don’t know how you convinced the entire Council that you were mature enough to be King, Noah! You are such a child!” She twisted her body so he couldn’t grab at her hair again. “And I swear, if you pull my hair once more like some sort of schoolyard bully, I am going to put you to sleep and shave you bald!” Noah immediately raised his hands in acquiescence, laughing as Legna flushed in exasperation. For all her grace and ladylike ways, Noah’s little sister was quite capable of making good on any threat she made. “I mean really, Noah. You are just about seven hundred years old. One would think you could at least act like it.

Cassian was sizing up Nesta, a gleam in his eyes that I could only interpret as a warrior finding himself faced with a new, interesting opponent. Then, Mother above, Nesta shifted her attention to Cassian, noticing that gleam- what it meant. She snarled softly. 'What are you looking at?' Cassian's brows rose- little amusement to be found now. 'Someone who let her younger sister risk her life every day in the woods while she did nothing. Someone who let a fourteen-year-old child go out into that forest, so close to the wall.' My face began heating, and I opened my mouth. To say what, I don't know. 'Your sister died- died to save my people. She is willing to do so again to protect you from war. So don't expect me to sit here with my mouth shut while you sneer at her for a choice she did not get to make- and insult my people in the process.' Nesta didn't bat an eyelash as she studied the handsome features, the muscled torso. Then turned to me. Dismissing him entirely. Cassian's face went almost feral. A wolf who had been circling a doe... only to find a mountain cat wearing its hide instead.

Others may not notice it, because an angry Toraf is truly a rare thing to behold, but Galen can practically feel the animosity emanating from his friend. Which is why he casually bumps into him, taking care to be overly apologetic. “Oh, sorry about that, minnow. I didn’t even see you there.” Galen mimics Toraf’s demeanor, crossing his arms and staring ahead of them. What they’re supposed to be staring at, he’s not sure. His effort is rewarded with a slight upward curve of his friend’s mouth. “Oh, don’t think twice about it, tadpole. I know it must be difficult to swim straight with a whale’s tail.” Galen scowls, taking care not to glance down at his fin. Ever since they went to retrieve Grom, he’s been sore all below the waist, but he’d just attributed it to tension from finding Nalia, and then the whole tribunal mess-not to mention, hovering in place for hours at a time. Still, he did examine his fin the evening before, hoping to massage out any knots he found, but was a bit shocked to see that his fin span seemed to have widened. He decided that he was letting his imagination get the better of him. Now he’s not so sure. “What do you mean?” he says lightly. Toraf nods down toward the sand. “You know what I mean. Looks like you have the red fever.” “The red fever bloats you all over, idiot. Right before it kills you. It doesn’t make your fin grow wider. Besides, the red tide hasn’t been bad for years now.” But Toraf already knows what the red fever looks like. Not long after he first became a Tracker, Toraf was commissioned to find an older Syrena who had gone off on his own to die after he’d been caught in what the humans call the red tide. Toraf was forced to tie seaweed around the old one’s fin and pull his body to the Cave of Memories. No, he doesn’t think I have the red fever. Toraf allows himself a long look at Galen’s fin. If it were anyone else, Galen would consider it rude. “Does it hurt?” “It’s sore.” “Have you asked anyone about it?” “I’ve had other things on my mind.” Which is the truth. Galen really hadn’t given it much thought until right now. Now that it has been noticed by someone else. Toraf pulls his own fin around and after a few seconds of twisting and bending, he’s able to measure it against his torso. It spans from his neck to where his waist turns into velvety tail. He nods to Galen to do the same. Galen is horrified to find that his fin now spans from the top of his head to well below his waist. It really does look like a whale tail. “I don’t know how I feel about that,” Toraf says, thoughtful. “I’ve gotten used to having the most impressive fin out of the two of us.” Galen grins, letting his tail fall. “For a minute there I thought you really cared.” Toraf shrugs. “Being self-conscious doesn’t suit you.” Galen follows his gaze back out into the sea ahead of them. “So what do you think about yesterday’s tribunal?” “I think I know where Nalia and Emma get their temper.” Galen laughs. “I thought Jagen was going to pass out when Antonis grabbed him.” “He’s not very good at interacting with others anymore, is he?” “I wonder if he ever was. I told you how crazy Nalia always acted. Could be a family trait.” It looks like Toraf might actually smile but instead his gaze jerks back out to sea, a new scowl on his face. “Oh, no,” Galen groans. “What is it?” Please don’t say Emma. Please don’t say Emma. “Rayna,” Toraf says through clenched teeth. “She’s heading straight for us.” That’s almost as bad.

I had the most ridiculous dream.” I point at my brother. “You were there.” I point at Simon beside him. “And you.” Then Franny, all of them huddled on the floor around me. “And you too. You . . . abdicated the throne, Nicholas. And they all wanted to make me king.” A maniacal laugh passes my lips . . . until I turn to the right and see dark blue eyes, sweet lips. and black, swirling hair. Then I scream like a girl. “Ahhhh!” It’s Olivia. My brother’s wife. His very American wife. I turn back to Nicholas. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?” “No, Henry.” I lie back down on the floor. “Fuuuuuck.” Then I feel sort of bad. “Sorry, Olive. You know I think you’re top-notch.” She smiles kindly. “It’s okay, Henry. I’m sorry you’re having a hard time.” I scrub my hand over my face, trying to think clearly. “It’s all right. This is a better, new plan—I won’t have to live under the stage now.” “You were going to live under the stage?” Nicholas asks. I wave my hand. “Forget it. It was Potter’s stupid idea. Boy Wonder Wizard, my arse.” And now my brother looks really worried. I gesture to him. “But you’re here now. You can take me with you back to the States.” “Henry . . .” “Give me your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free—that describes me perfectly! I’m a huddled mass, Nicholas!” He squeezes my arms, shaking just a bit. “Henry. You can’t move to America.” I grasp his shirt. And my voice morphs into an eight-year-old boy’s, confessing he sees dead people. “But she’s so mean, Nicholas. She’s. So. Mean.” He taps my back. “I know.” Nicholas and Simon drag me up, holding on so that I stay on my feet. “But we’ll figure it out,” Nicholas says. “It’s going to be all right.” I shake my head. “You keep saying that. I’m starting to think you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

I felt it – that magical spark that turned into a wildfire and melded people together. Time wasn’t a factor. It didn’t deteriorate or fade. Nor was it a physical thing you could break or a feeling you could get over. I’d found it – whatever the fuck it was – with Mira York when I was twenty-three years old. It didn’t matter that our half-ass relationship had only lasted six months. It didn’t even matter that she’d never felt that spark for me. It was still fucking inside me, taunting and tormenting me, craving her in any and every possible way I could have her. And I didn’t really want to ignore it at all.

Cecily let her cheek fall to Leta’s shoulder and hugged her back. It felt so nice to be loved by someone in the world. Since her mother’s death, she’d had no one of her own. It was a lonely life, despite the excitement and adventure her work held for her. She wasn’t openly affectionate at all, except with Leta. “For God’s sake, next you’ll be rocking her to sleep at night!” came a deep, disgusted voice at Cecily’s back, and Cecily stiffened because she recognized it immediately. “She’s my baby girl,” Leta told her tall, handsome son with a grin. “Shut up.” Cecily turned a little awkwardly. She hadn’t expected this. Tate Winthrop towered over both of them. His jet-black hair was loose as he never wore it in the city, falling thick and straight almost to his waist. He was wearing a breastplate with buckskin leggings and high-topped mocassins. There were two feathers straight up in his hair with notches that had meaning among his people, marks of bravery. Cecily tried not to stare at him. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever known. Since her seventeenth birthday, Tate had been her world. Fortunately he didn’t realize that her mad flirting hid a true emotion. In fact, he treated her exactly as he had when she came to him for comfort after her mother had died suddenly; as he had when she came to him again with bruises all over her thin, young body from her drunken stepfather’s violent attack. Although she dated, she’d never had a serious boyfriend. She had secret terrors of intimacy that had never really gone away, except when she thought of Tate that way. She loved him… “Why aren’t you dressed properly?” Tate asked, scowling at her skirt and blouse. “I bought you buckskins for your birthday, didn’t I?” “Three years ago,” she said without meeting his probing eyes. She didn’t like remembering that he’d forgotten her birthday this year. “I gained weight since then.” “Oh. Well, find something you like here…” She held up a hand. “I don’t want you to buy me anything else,” she said flatly, and didn’t back down from the sudden menace in his dark eyes. “I’m not dressing up like a Lakota woman. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blond. I don’t want to be mistaken for some sort of overstimulated Native American groupie buying up artificial artifacts and enthusing over citified Native American flute music, trying to act like a member of the tribe.” “You belong to it,” he returned. “We adopted you years ago.” “So you did,” she said. That was how he thought of her-a sister. That wasn’t the way she wanted him to think of her. She smiled faintly. “But I won’t pass for a Lakota, whatever I wear.” “You could take your hair down,” he continued thoughtfully. She shook her head. She only let her hair loose at night, when she went to bed. Perhaps she kept it tightly coiled for pure spite, because he loved long hair and she knew it. “How old are you?” he asked, trying to remember. “Twenty, isn’t it?” “I was, give years ago,” she said, exasperated. “You used to work for the CIA. I seem to remember that you went to college, too, and got a law degree. Didn’t they teach you how to count?” He looked surprised. Where had the years gone? She hadn’t aged, not visibly.

When we pull back into the castle courtyard, James is waiting. And he does not look happy. Actually he looks like a blond Hulk . . . right before he goes smash. Sarah sees it too. “He’s miffed.” “Yep.” We get out of the car and she turns so fast there’s a breeze. “I should go find Penny. ’Bye.” I call after her. “Chicken!” She just waves her hand over her shoulder. Slowly, I approach him. Like an explorer, deep in the jungles of the Amazon, making first contact with a tribe that has never seen the outside world. And I hold out my peace offering. It’s a Mega Pounder with cheese. “I got you a burger.” James snatches it from my hand angrily. But . . . he doesn’t throw it away. He turns to one of the men behind him. “Mick, bring it here.” Mick—a big, truck-size bloke—brings him a brown paper bag. And James’s cold blue eyes turn back to me. “After speaking with your former security team, I had an audience with Her Majesty the Queen last year when you were named heir. Given your history of slipping your detail, I asked her permission to ensure your safety by any means necessary, including this.” He reaches into the bag and pulls out a children’s leash—the type you see on ankle-biters at amusement parks, with a deranged-looking monkey sticking its head out of a backpack, his mouth wide and gaping, like he’s about to eat whoever’s wearing it. And James smiles. “Queen Lenora said yes.” I suspected Granny didn’t like me anymore; now I’m certain of it. “If I have to,” James warns, “I’ll connect this to you and the other end to old Mick here.” Mick doesn’t look any happier about the fucking prospect than I am. “I don’t want to do that, but . . .” He shrugs, no further explanation needed. “So the next time you feel like ditching? Remember the monkey, Your Grace.” He puts the revolting thing back in its bag. And I wonder if fire would kill it. “Are we good, Prince Henry?” James asks. I respect a man willing to go balls-to-the-wall for his job. I don’t like the monkey . . . but I respect it. I flash him the okay sign with my fingers. “Golden.

returned to his seat. ‘Did it hurt?’ Percy whispered. Frank looked at his forearm, which was still steaming. ‘Yeah. A lot.’ He seemed mystified by the badges in his hand – the centurion’s mark and the Mural Crown – like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. ‘Here.’ Hazel’s eyes shone with pride. ‘Let me.’ She pinned the medals to Frank’s shirt. Percy smiled. He’d only known Frank for a day, but he felt proud of him, too. ‘You deserve it, man,’ he said. ‘What you did last night? Natural leadership.’ Frank scowled. ‘But centurion –’ ‘Centurion Zhang,’ called Octavian. ‘Did you hear the question?’ Frank blinked. ‘Um … sorry. What?’ Octavian turned to the senate and smirked, like, What did I tell you? ‘I was asking,’ Octavian said like he was talking to a three-year-old, ‘if you have a plan for the quest.

Necessities 1 A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas, but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in. With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up. The green smear of the woods we first made love in. The yellow city we thought was our future. The red highways not traveled, the green ones with their missed exits, the black side roads which took us where we had not meant to go. The high peaks, recorded by relatives, though we prefer certain unmarked elevations, the private alps no one knows we have climbed. The careful boundaries we draw and erase. And always, around the edges, the opaque wash of blue, concealing the drop-off they have stepped into before us, singly, mapless, not looking back. 2 The illusion of progress. Imagine our lives without it: tape measures rolled back, yardsticks chopped off. Wheels turning but going nowhere. Paintings flat, with no vanishing point. The plots of all novels circular; page numbers reversing themselves past the middle. The mountaintop no longer a goal, merely the point between ascent and descent. All streets looping back on themselves; life as a beckoning road an absurd idea. Our children refusing to grow out of their childhoods; the years refusing to drag themselves toward the new century. And hope, the puppy that bounds ahead, no longer a household animal. 3 Answers to questions, an endless supply. New ones that startle, old ones that reassure us. All of them wrong perhaps, but for the moment solutions, like kisses or surgery. Rising inflections countered by level voices, words beginning with w hushed by declarative sentences. The small, bold sphere of the period chasing after the hook, the doubter that walks on water and treads air and refuses to go away. 4 Evidence that we matter. The crash of the plane which, at the last moment, we did not take. The involuntary turn of the head, which caused the bullet to miss us. The obscene caller who wakes us at midnight to the smell of gas. The moon's full blessing when we fell in love, its black mood when it was all over. Confirm us, we say to the world, with your weather, your gifts, your warnings, your ringing telephones, your long, bleak silences. 5 Even now, the old things first things, which taught us language. Things of day and of night. Irrational lightning, fickle clouds, the incorruptible moon. Fire as revolution, grass as the heir to all revolutions. Snow as the alphabet of the dead, subtle, undeciphered. The river as what we wish it to be. Trees in their humanness, animals in their otherness. Summits. Chasms. Clearings. And stars, which gave us the word distance, so we could name our deepest sadness.

Finnish education appears paradoxical to outside observers because it seems to break a lot of the rules. In Finland, “less is more.” Children don’t start academics1 until the year they turn seven. They have a lot of recess (ten to fifteen minutes every forty-five minutes, even through high school), shorter school hours than we do in the United States (Finnish children spend nearly three hundred fewer hours2 in elementary school per year than Americans), and the lightest homework load of any industrialized nation. There are no gifted programs, few private schools, and no high-stakes national standardized tests. Yet over the past decade, Finland has consistently performed at the top on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test given to fifteen-year-olds in nations around the world. While American children3 usually hover around the middle of the pack on this test, Finland’s excel.

The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s “enormous bliss” of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to “enormous”) comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? not, certainly, for a biscuit tin filled with moss, nor even (though that came into it) for my own past. ’Ioῦλíανπoθῶ2—and before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison. The

I know he’s had his problems in the past… “He can’t keep his hands off a liquor bottle at the best of times, and he still hasn’t accepted the loss of his wife!” “I sent him to a therapist over in Baltimore,” she continued. “He’s narrowed his habit down to a six-pack of beer on Saturdays.” “What does he get for a reward?” he asked insolently. She sighed irritably. “Nobody suits you! You don’t even like poor old lonely Senator Holden.” “Like him? Holden?” he asked, aghast. “Good God, he’s the one man in Congress I’d like to burn at the stake! I’d furnish the wood and the matches!” “You and Leta,” she said, shaking her head. “Now, listen carefully. The Lakota didn’t burn people at the stake,” she said firmly. She went on to explain who did, and how, and why. He searched her enthusiastic eyes. “You really do love Native American history, don’t you?” She nodded. “The way your ancestors lived for thousands of years was so logical. They honored the man in the tribe who was the poorest, because he gave away more than the others did. They shared everything. They gave gifts, even to the point of bankrupting themselves. They never hit a little child to discipline it. They accepted even the most blatant differences in people without condemning them.” She glanced at Tate and found him watching her. She smiled self-consciously. “I like your way better.” “Most whites never come close to understanding us, no matter how hard they try.” “I had you and Leta to teach me,” she said simply. “They were wonderful lessons that I learned, here on the reservation. I feel…at peace here. At home. I belong, even though I shouldn’t.” He nodded. “You belong,” he said, and there was a note in his deep voice that she hadn’t heard before. Unexpectedly he caught her small chin and turned her face up to his. He searched her eyes until she felt as if her heart might explode from the excitement of the way he was looking at her. His thumb whispered up to the soft bow of her mouth with its light covering of pale pink lipstick. He caressed the lower lip away from her teeth and scowled as if the feel of it made some sort of confusion in him. He looked straight into her eyes. The moment was almost intimate, and she couldn’t break it. Her lips parted and his thumb pressed against them, hard. “Now, isn’t that interesting?” he said to himself in a low, deep whisper. “Wh…what?” she stammered. His eyes were on her bare throat, where her pulse was hammering wildly. His hand moved down, and he pressed his thumb to the visible throb of the artery there. He could feel himself going taut at the unexpected reaction. It was Oklahoma all over again, when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever touch her again. Impulses, he told himself firmly, were stupid and sometimes dangerous. And Cecily was off limits. Period. He pulled his hand back and stood up, grateful that the loose fit of his buckskins hid his physical reaction to her. “Mother’s won a prize,” he said. His voice sounded oddly strained. He forced a nonchalant smile and turned to Cecily. She was visibly shaken. He shouldn’t have looked at her. Her reactions kindled new fires in him.

Angels! Halt and listen to me! I am the witch Ruta Skadi, and I want to talk to you!” They turned. Their great wings beat inward, slowing them, and their bodies swung downward till they were standing upright in the air, holding their position by the beating of their wings. They surrounded her, five huge forms glowing in the dark air, lit by an invisible sun. She looked around, sitting on her pine branch proud and unafraid, though her heart was beating with the strangeness of it, and her dæmon fluttered to sit close to the warmth of her body. Each angel-being was distinctly an individual, and yet they had more in common with one another than with any human she had seen. What they shared was a shimmering, darting play of intelligence and feeling that seemed to sweep over them all simultaneously. They were naked, but she felt naked in front of their glance, it was so piercing and went so deep. Still, she was unashamed of what she was, and she returned their gaze with head held high. “So you are angels,” she said, “or Watchers, or bene elim. Where are you going?” “We are following a call,” said one. She was not sure which one had spoken. It might have been any or all of them at once. “Whose call?” she said. “A man’s.” “Lord Asriel’s?” “It may be.” “Why are you following his call?” “Because we are willing to,” came the reply. “Then wherever he is, you can guide me to him as well,” she ordered them. Ruta Skadi was four hundred and sixteen years old, with all the pride and knowledge of an adult witch queen. She was wiser by far than any short-lived human, but she had not the slightest idea of how like a child she seemed beside these ancient beings. Nor did she know how far their awareness spread out beyond her like filamentary tentacles to the remotest corners of universes she had never dreamed of; nor that she saw them as human-formed only because her eyes expected to. If she were to perceive their true form, they would seem more like architecture than organism, like huge structures composed of intelligence and feeling. But they expected nothing else: she was very young.

Her collections matured, categorized methodically by order, genus, and species; by age according to bone wear; by size in millimeters of feathers; or by the most fragile hues of greens. The science and art entwined in each other’s strengths: the colors, the light, the species, the life; weaving a masterpiece of knowledge and beauty that filled every corner of her shack. Her world. She grew with them—the trunk of the vine—alone, but holding all the wonders together. But just as her collection grew, so did her loneliness. A pain as large as her heart lived in her chest. Nothing eased it. Not the gulls, not a splendid sunset, not the rarest of shells. Months turned into a year. The lonely became larger than she could hold. She wished for someone’s voice, presence, touch, but wished more to protect her heart. Months passed into another year. Then another. PART 2 The Swamp 22. Same Tide 1965 Nineteen years old, legs longer, eyes larger and seemingly blacker, Kya sat on Point Beach, watching sand crabs bury themselves backward into the swash.

As soon as the Rabbi of Bluzhov had finished the ceremony of kindling the lights, Zamietchkowski elbowed his way to the rabbi and said, “Spira, you are a clever and honest person. I can understand your need to light Hanukkah candles in these wretched times. I can even understand the historical note of the second blessing, ‘Who wroughtest miracles for our fathers in days of old, at this season.’ But the fact that you recited the third blessing is beyond me. How could you thank God and say ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive, and hast preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season’? How could you say it when hundreds of dead Jewish bodies are literally lying within the shadows of the Hanukkah lights, when thousands of living Jewish skeletons are walking around in camp, and millions more are being massacred? For this you are thankful to God? For this you praise the Lord? This you call ‘keeping us alive’?” “Zamietchkowski, you are a hundred percent right,” answered the rabbi. “When I reached the third blessing, I also hesitated and asked myself, what should I do with this blessing? I turned my head in order to ask the Rabbi of Zaner and other distinguished rabbis who were standing near me, if indeed I might recite the blessing. But just as I was turning my head, I noticed that behind me a throng was standing, a large crowd of living Jews, their faces expressing faith, devotion, and concentration as they were listening to the rite of the kindling of the Hanukkah lights. I said to myself, if God, blessed be He, has such a nation that at times like these, when during the lighting of the Hanukkah lights they see in front of them the heaps of bodies of their beloved fathers, brothers, and sons, and death is looking from every corner, if despite all that, they stand in throngs and with devotion listening to the Hanukkah blessing ‘Who wroughtest miracles for our fathers in days of old, at this season’; if, indeed, I was blessed to see such a people with so much faith and fervor, then I am under a special obligation to recite the third blessing.”2 Some years after liberation, the Rabbi of Bluzhov, now residing in Brooklyn, New York, received regards from Mr. Zamietchkowski. Zamietchkowski asked the son of the Skabiner Rabbi to tell Israel Spira, the Rabbi of Bluzhov, that the answer he gave him that dark Hanukkah night in Bergen Belsen had stayed with him ever since, and was a constant source of inspiration during hard and troubled times. Based

Knowledgeable observers report that dating has nearly disappeared from college campuses and among young adults generally. It has been replaced by something called “hanging out.” You young people apparently know what this is, but I will describe it for the benefit of those of us who are middle-aged or older and otherwise uninformed. Hanging out consists of numbers of young men and young women joining together in some group activity. It is very different from dating. For the benefit of some of you who are not middle-aged or older, I also may need to describe what dating is. Unlike hanging out, dating is not a team sport. Dating is pairing off to experience the kind of one-on-one association and temporary commitment that can lead to marriage in some rare and treasured cases. . . . All of this made dating more difficult. And the more elaborate and expensive the date, the fewer the dates. As dates become fewer and more elaborate, this seems to create an expectation that a date implies seriousness or continuing commitment. That expectation discourages dating even more. . . . Simple and more frequent dates allow both men and women to “shop around” in a way that allows extensive evaluation of the prospects. The old-fashioned date was a wonderful way to get acquainted with a member of the opposite sex. It encouraged conversation. It allowed you to see how you treat others and how you are treated in a one-on-one situation. It gave opportunities to learn how to initiate and sustain a mature relationship. None of that happens in hanging out. My single brothers and sisters, follow the simple dating pattern and you don’t need to do your looking through Internet chat rooms or dating services—two alternatives that can be very dangerous or at least unnecessary or ineffective. . . . Men, if you have returned from your mission and you are still following the boy-girl patterns you were counseled to follow when you were 15, it is time for you to grow up. Gather your courage and look for someone to pair off with. Start with a variety of dates with a variety of young women, and when that phase yields a good prospect, proceed to courtship. It’s marriage time. That is what the Lord intends for His young adult sons and daughters. Men have the initiative, and you men should get on with it. If you don’t know what a date is, perhaps this definition will help. I heard it from my 18-year-old granddaughter. A “date” must pass the test of three p’s: (1) planned ahead, (2) paid for, and (3) paired off. Young women, resist too much hanging out, and encourage dates that are simple, inexpensive, and frequent. Don’t make it easy for young men to hang out in a setting where you women provide the food. Don’t subsidize freeloaders. An occasional group activity is OK, but when you see men who make hanging out their primary interaction with the opposite sex, I think you should lock the pantry and bolt the front door. If you do this, you should also hang up a sign, “Will open for individual dates,” or something like that. And, young women, please make it easier for these shy males to ask for a simple, inexpensive date. Part of making it easier is to avoid implying that a date is something very serious. If we are to persuade young men to ask for dates more frequently, we must establish a mutual expectation that to go on a date is not to imply a continuing commitment. Finally, young women, if you turn down a date, be kind. Otherwise you may crush a nervous and shy questioner and destroy him as a potential dater, and that could hurt some other sister. My single young friends, we counsel you to channel your associations with the opposite sex into dating patterns that have the potential to mature into marriage, not hanging-out patterns that only have the prospect to mature into team sports like touch football. Marriage is not a group activity—at least, not until the children come along in goodly numbers.

1. Hassle. 2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.) 3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid’s insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.) 4. Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister-in-law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn’t say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.) 5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I’m a pig.) 6. Curtailment of my traveling. (Note curtailment. Not conclusion.) 7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.) 8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend’s five-year-old in the room.) 9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew—every woman, too, which is depressing—would take me less seriously.) 10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother could feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter’s life is hideous, too.)

On May 31, 1921, the Ford Motor Company turned out Car No. 5,000,000. It is out in my museum along with the gasoline buggy that I began work on thirty years before and which first ran satisfactorily along in the spring of 1893. I was running it when the bobolinks came to Dearborn and they always come on April 2nd. There is all the difference in the world in the appearance of the two vehicles and almost as much difference in construction and materials, but in fundamentals the two are curiously alike—except that the old buggy has on it a few wrinkles that we have not yet quite adopted in our modern car. For that first car or buggy, even though it had but two cylinders, would make twenty miles an hour and run sixty miles on the three gallons of gas the little tank held and is as good to-day as the day it was built. The development in methods of manufacture and in materials has been greater than the development in basic design. The whole design has been refined; the present Ford car, which is the "Model T," has four cylinders and a self starter—it is in every way a more convenient and an easier riding car. It is simpler than the first car. But almost every point in it may be found also in the first car. The changes have been brought about through experience in the making and not through any change in the basic principle—which I take to be an important fact demonstrating that, given a good idea to start with, it is better to concentrate on perfecting it than to hunt around for a new idea.

right to use Apple Corps for their record and business holdings. Alas, this did not resolve the issue of getting the Beatles onto iTunes. For that to happen, the Beatles and EMI Music, which held the rights to most of their songs, had to negotiate their own differences over how to handle the digital rights. “The Beatles all want to be on iTunes,” Jobs later recalled, “but they and EMI are like an old married couple. They hate each other but can’t get divorced. The fact that my favorite band was the last holdout from iTunes was something I very much hoped I would live to resolve.” As it turned out, he would. Bono Bono, the lead singer of U2, deeply appreciated Apple’s marketing muscle. He was confident that his Dublin-based band was still the best in the world, but in 2004 it was trying, after almost thirty years together, to reinvigorate its image. It had produced an exciting new album with a song that the band’s lead guitarist, The Edge, declared to be “the mother of all rock tunes.” Bono knew he needed to find a way to get it some traction, so he placed a call to Jobs. “I wanted something specific from Apple,” Bono recalled. “We had a song called ‘Vertigo’ that featured an aggressive guitar riff that I knew would be contagious, but only if people were exposed to it many, many times.” He was worried that the era of promoting a song through airplay on the radio was over. So Bono visited Jobs at home in Palo Alto, walked around the garden, and made an unusual pitch. Over the years U2 had spurned

There, at the top of the stairs, was the world: acres and miles of open land, an arc of the planet, curving off and lighted in the distance under the morning sky. The building we had just passed through was, it turned out, only the entrance to an open dig, where Chinese archaeologists were in the years-long process of excavating a buried army of life-sized clay soldiers. I saw what looked like human bodies coming out of the earth. Straight trenches cut the bare soil into deep corridors or long pits. From the trench walls emerged an elbow here, a leg and foot there, a head and neck. Everything was the same color, the terra-cotta earth and the people: the color of plant pots. Seeing the broad earth under the open sky, and a patch of it sliced into deep corridors from which bodies emerge, surprises many people to tears. Who would not weep from shock? I seemed to see our lives from the aspect of eternity. I seemed long dead and looking down. For it is in our lifetimes alone that people can witness the unearthing of the deep-dwelling army of Emperor Qin—the seven thousand or the ten thousand soldiers, their real crossbows and swords, their horses and chariots, bared to the light for the first time in 2,200 years. “In the pictures of the old masters,” Max Picard wrote in The World of Silence, “people seem as though they had just come out of the opening in a wall; as if they had wriggled their way out with difficulty. They seem unsafe and hesitant because they have come out too far and still belong more to silence than themselves.

You see Matt and Anthony every week. You see everyone every week.” “Not everyone, Nick,” his mother said pointedly. Then her voice changed and turned warmer. “Well, except for this upcoming weekend.” Nick paused at this. It could’ve been a trap. Perhaps his mother suspected something was up with her birthday and was fishing for information. Although it was surprising that she’d come to him—she usually went after Anthony, who had the secret-keeping skills of a four-year-old. “Why? What’s happening this weekend?” he asked nonchalantly. “Oh, nothing much. I just heard something about a sixtieth birthday party your father and you boys are planning for me.” Fucking Anthony. “And don’t go blaming Anthony,” his mother said, quick to protect her youngest. “I’d already heard about it from your aunt Donna before he slipped.” Nick knew what her next question would be before the words left her mouth. “So? Are you bringing a date?” she asked. “Sorry, Ma. It’ll just be me.” “There’s a surprise.” He pulled into the driveway that led to the parking garage of his condo building. “Just a warning, I’m about to pull into the garage—I might lose you.” “How convenient,” his mother said. “Because I had a really nice lecture planned for you.” “Let me guess the highlights: it involved me needing to focus on something other than work, and you dying heartbroken and miserable without grandchildren. Am I close?” “Not bad. But I’ll save the rest of the lecture for Sunday. There’s going to be a lot of gesturing on my part, and the phone doesn’t quite capture the spirit.” Nick smiled. “Shockingly, I’m looking forward to it. I’ll see you Sunday, Ma.” Her voice softened. “I know how busy you are, Nick. It means a lot to me that you’re coming home.” He knew it did. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Variations on a tired, old theme Here’s another example of addict manipulation that plagues parents. The phone rings. It’s the addict. He says he has a job. You’re thrilled. But you’re also apprehensive. Because you know he hasn’t simply called to tell you good news. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Then comes the zinger you knew would be coming. The request. He says everybody at this company wears business suits and ties, none of which he has. He says if you can’t wire him $1800 right away, he won’t be able to take the job. The implications are clear. Suddenly, you’ve become the deciding factor as to whether or not the addict will be able to take the job. Have a future. Have a life. You’ve got that old, familiar sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. This is not the child you gladly would have financed in any way possible to get him started in life. This is the child who has been strung out on drugs for years and has shown absolutely no interest in such things as having a conventional job. He has also, if you remember correctly, come to you quite a few times with variations on this same tired, old story. One variation called for a car so he could get to work. (Why is it that addicts are always being offered jobs in the middle of nowhere that can’t be reached by public transportation?) Another variation called for the money to purchase a round-trip airline ticket to interview for a job three thousand miles away. Being presented with what amounts to a no-choice request, the question is: Are you going to contribute in what you know is probably another scam, or are you going to say sorry and hang up? To step out of the role of banker/victim/rescuer, you have to quit the job of banker/victim/rescuer. You have to change the coda. You have to forget all the stipulations there are to being a parent. You have to harden your heart and tell yourself parenthood no longer applies to you—not while your child is addicted. Not an easy thing to do. P.S. You know in your heart there is no job starting on Monday. But even if there is, it’s hardly your responsibility if the addict goes well dressed, badly dressed, or undressed. Facing the unfaceable: The situation may never change In summary, you had a child and that child became an addict. Your love for the child didn’t vanish. But you’ve had to wean yourself away from the person your child has become through his or her drugs and/ or alcohol abuse. Your journey with the addicted child has led you through various stages of pain, grief, and despair and into new phases of strength, acceptance, and healing. There’s a good chance that you might not be as healthy-minded as you are today had it not been for the tribulations with the addict. But you’ll never know. The one thing you do know is that you wouldn’t volunteer to go through it again, even with all the awareness you’ve gained. You would never have sacrificed your child just so that you could become a better, stronger person. But this is the way it has turned out. You’re doing okay with it, almost twenty-four hours a day. It’s just the odd few minutes that are hard to get through, like the ones in the middle of the night when you awaken to find that the grief hasn’t really gone away—it’s just under smart, new management. Or when you’re walking along a street or in a mall and you see someone who reminds you of your addicted child, but isn’t a substance abuser, and you feel that void in your heart. You ache for what might have been with your child, the happy life, the fulfilled career. And you ache for the events that never took place—the high school graduation, the engagement party, the wedding, the grandkids. These are the celebrations of life that you’ll probably never get to enjoy. Although you never know. DON’T LET    YOUR KIDS  KILL  YOU  A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children PART 2

Having been through prep with Flavius, Venia, and Octavia numerous times, it should just be an old routine to survive. But I haven’t anticipated the emotional ordeal that awaits me. At some point during the prep, each of them bursts into tears at least twice, and Octavia pretty much keeps up a running whimper throughout the morning. It turns out they really have become attached to me, and the idea of my returning to the arena has undone them. Combine that with the fact that by losing me they’ll be losing their ticket to all kinds of big social events, particularly my wedding, and the whole thing becomes unbearable. The idea of being strong for someone else having never entered their heads, I find myself in the position of having to console them. Since I’m the person going in to be slaughtered, this is somewhat annoying. It’s interesting, though, when I think of what Peeta said about the attendant on the train being unhappy about the victors having to fight again. About people in the Capitol not liking it. I still think all of that will be forgotten once the gong sounds, but it’s something of a revelation that those in the Capitol feel anything at all about us. They certainly don’t have a problem watching children murdered every year. But maybe they know too much about the victors, especially the ones who’ve been celebrities for ages, to forget we’re human beings. It’s more like watching your own friends die. More like the Games are for those of us in the districts. By the time Cinna shows up, I am irritable and exhausted from comforting the prep team, especially because their constant tears are reminding me of the ones undoubtedly being shed at home. Standing there in my thin robe with my stinging skin and heart, I know I can’t bear even one more look of regret. So the moment he walks in the door I snap, “I swear if you cry, I’ll kill you here and now.” Cinna just smiles. “Had a damp morning?” “You could wring me out,” I reply.

INTERNATIONAL LAW WAS CREATED DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION BECAUSE a group of Mexicans—and one African American—gang-raped and murdered two teenaged girls in Houston, Texas.1 The crime made history in another way: It led to the most death sentences handed out for a single crime in Texas since 1949.2 Do you even know about this case? The only reason the media eventually admitted that the lead rapist, Jose Ernesto Medellin, was an illegal alien from Mexico was to try to overturn his conviction on the grounds that he had not been informed of his right, as a Mexican citizen, to confer with the Mexican consulate. Journalists have an irritating tendency to skimp on detail when reporting crimes by immigrants, a practice that will not be followed here. One summer night in June 1993, fourteen-year-old Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña, who had just turned sixteen, were returning from a pool party, and decided to take a shortcut through a park to make their 11:30 p.m. curfew. They encountered a group of Hispanic men, who were in the process of discussing “gang etiquette,” such as not complaining if other members talked about having sex with your mother.3 The girls ran away, but Medellin grabbed Jennifer and began ripping her clothes off. Hearing her screams, Elizabeth came back to help her friend. For more than an hour, the five Hispanics and one black man raped the teens, vaginally, anally, and orally—“every way you can assault a human being,” as the prosecutor put it.4 The girls were beaten, kicked, and stomped, their teeth knocked out and their ribs broken. One of the Hispanic men told Medellin’s fourteen-year-old brother to “get some,” so he raped one of the girls, too. But when it was time to kill the girls, Medellin said his brother was “too small to watch” and dragged the girls into the woods.5 There, the girls were forced to kneel on the ground and a belt or shoelace was looped around their necks. Then a man on each side pulled on the cord as hard as he could. The men strangling Jennifer pulled so hard they broke the belt. Medellin later complained that “the bitch wouldn’t die.” When it was done, he repeatedly stomped on the girls’ necks, to make sure they were dead.6 At trial, Medellin’s sister-in-law testified that shortly after the gruesome murders, Medellin was laughing about it, saying they’d “had some fun with some girls” and boasting that he had “virgin blood” on his underpants.7 It’s difficult to understand a culture where such an orgy of cruelty is bragged about at all, but especially in front of women.

Their Graces bought me, you know. They’d acquired my brother Devlin the year before, and my mother, inspired by this development, threatened to publish all manner of lurid memoirs regarding His Grace.” Acquired her brother? As if he were a promising yearling colt or an attractive patch of ground? “You are going to burden me with the details of your family past, I take it?” “You are the man who glories in details.” Without the least rude inflection, she made it sound like a failing. “My point is that my mother sold me. She could just as easily have sold me to a brothel. It’s done all the time. Unlike your sisters, Mr. Hazlit, I do not take for granted the propriety with which I was raised. You may ignore it if you please; I will not.” She had such a lovely voice. Light, soft, lilting with a hint of something Gaelic or Celtic… exotic. The sound of her voice was so pretty, it almost disguised the ugliness of her words. “How old were you?” “Five, possibly six. It depends on whether I am truly Moreland’s by-blow or just a result of my mother’s schemes in his direction.” Six years old and sold to a brothel? The food he’d eaten threatened to rebel. “I’m… sorry.” For calling her a dollymop, for making her repeat this miserable tale, for what he was about to suggest. She turned her head to regard him, the slight sheen in her eyes making him sorrier still. Sorrier than he could recall being about anything in a long, long time. Not just guilty and ashamed, but full of regret—for her. The way he’d been full of regret for his sisters and powerless to do anything but support them in their solitary struggles. He shoved that thought aside, along with the odd notion that he should take Magdalene Windham’s hand in some laughable gesture of comfort. He passed her his handkerchief instead. “This makes the stated purpose of my call somewhat awkward.” “It makes just about everything somewhat awkward,” she said quietly. “Try a few years at finishing school when you’re the daughter of not just a courtesan—there are some of those, after all—but a courtesan who sells her offspring. I realized fairly early that my mother’s great failing was not a lack of virtue, but rather that she was greedy in her fall from grace.” “She exploited a child,” Hazlit said. “That is an order of magnitude different from parlaying with an adult male in a transaction of mutual benefit.” “Do you think so?” She laid his handkerchief out in her lap, her fingers running over his monogrammed initials. “Some might say she was protecting me, providing for me and holding the duke accountable for his youthful indiscretions.” Despite her mild tone, Hazlit didn’t think Miss Windham would reach those conclusions. She might long to, but she wouldn’t. By the age of six a child usually had the measure of her caretakers. And to think of Maggie Windham at six… big innocent green eyes, masses of red hair, perfect skin… in a brothel. “I

Gray burst into the galley. “Miss Turner is not eating.” The cramped, boxed-in nature of the space, the oppressive heat-it seemed an appropriate place to take this irrational surge of resentment. If only his emotion could dissipate through the ventilation slats as quickly as steam. “And good morning to you, too.” Gabriel wiped his hands on his apron without glancing up. “She’s not eating,” Gray repeated evenly. “She’s wasting away.” He didn’t even realize his knuckled cracked. He flexed his fingers impatiently. “Wasting away?” Gabriel’s face split in a grin as he picked up a mallet and attacked a hunk of salted pork. “Now what makes you say that?” “Her dress no longer fits properly. The neckline of her bodice is too loose.” Gabriel stopped pounding and looked up, meeting Gray’s eyes for the first time since he’d entered the galley. The mocking arch of the old man’s eyebrows had Gray clenching his teeth. They stared at each other for a second. Then Gray blew out his breath and looked away, and Gabriel broke into peals of laughter. “Never thought I’d live to see the day,” the old cook finally said, “when you would complain that a beautiful lady’s bodice was too loose.” “It’s not that she’s a beautiful lady-“ Gabriel looked up sharply. “It’s not merely that she’s a beautiful lady,” Gray amended. “She’s a passenger, and I have a duty to look out for her welfare.” “Wouldn’t that be the captain’s duty?” Gray narrowed his eyes. “And I know my duty well enough,” Gabriel continued. “It’s not as though I’m denying her food, now is it? I’m thinking Miss Turner just isn’t accustomed to the rough living aboard a ship. Used to finer fare, that one.” Gray scowled at the hunk of cured pork under Gabriel’s mallet and the shriveled, sprouted potatoes rolling back and forth with each tilt of the ship. “Is this the noon meal?” “This, and biscuit.” “I’ll order the men to trawl for a fish.” “Wouldn’t that be the captain’s duty?” Gabriel’s tone was sly. Gray wasn’t sure whether the plume of steam swirling through the galley originated for the stove or his ears. He didn’t care for Gabriel’s flippant tone. Neither did he care for the possibility of Miss Turner’s lush curves disappearing when he’d never had any chance to appreciate them. Frustrated beyond all reason, Gray turned to leave, wrenching open the galley door with such force, the hinges creaked in protest. He took a deep breath to compose himself, resolving not to slam the door shut behind him. Gabriel stopped pounding. “Sit down, Gray. Rest your bones.” With another rough sigh, Gray complied. He backed up two paces, slung himself onto a stool, and watched as the cook grabbed a tin cup from a hook on the wall and filled it, drawing a dipper of liquid from a small leather bucket. Then Gabriel set the cup on the table before him. Milk. Gabriel stared it. “For God’s sake, Gabriel. I’m not six years old anymore.” The old man raised his eyebrows. “Well, seeing as how you haven’t outgrown a visit to the kitchen when you’re in a sulk, I thought maybe you’d have a taste for milk yet, too. You did buy the goats.

What’ll it be?” Steve asked me, just days after our wedding. “Do we go on the honeymoon we’ve got planned, or do you want to go catch crocs?” My head was still spinning from the ceremony, the celebration, and the fact that I could now use the two words “my husband” and have them mean something real. The four months between February 2, 1992--the day Steve asked me to marry him--and our wedding day on June 4 had been a blur. Steve’s mother threw us an engagement party for Queensland friends and family, and I encountered a very common theme: “We never thought Steve would get married.” Everyone said it--relatives, old friends, and schoolmates. I’d smile and nod, but my inner response was, Well, we’ve got that in common. And something else: Wait until I get home and tell everybody I am moving to Australia. I knew what I’d have to explain. Being with Steve, running the zoo, and helping the crocs was exactly the right thing to do. I knew with all my heart and soul that this was the path I was meant to travel. My American friends--the best, closest ones--understood this perfectly. I trusted Steve with my life and loved him desperately. One of the first challenges was how to bring as many Australian friends and family as possible over to the United States for the wedding. None of us had a lot of money. Eleven people wound up making the trip from Australia, and we held the ceremony in the big Methodist church my grandmother attended. It was more than a wedding, it was saying good-bye to everyone I’d ever known. I invited everybody, even people who may not have been intimate friends. I even invited my dentist. The whole network of wildlife rehabilitators came too--four hundred people in all. The ceremony began at eight p.m., with coffee and cake afterward. I wore the same dress that my older sister Bonnie had worn at her wedding twenty-seven years earlier, and my sister Tricia wore at her wedding six years after that. The wedding cake had white frosting, but it was decorated with real flowers instead of icing ones. Steve had picked out a simple ring for me, a quarter carat, exactly what I wanted. He didn’t have a wedding ring. We were just going to borrow one for the service, but we couldn’t find anybody with fingers that were big enough. It turned out that my dad’s wedding ring fitted him, and that’s the one we used. Steve’s mother, Lyn, gave me a silk horseshoe to put around my wrist, a symbol of good luck. On our wedding day, June 4, 1992, it had been eight months since Steve and I first met. As the minister started reading the vows, I could see that Steve was nervous. His tuxedo looked like it was strangling him. For a man who was used to working in the tropics, he sure looked hot. The church was air-conditioned, but sweat drops formed on the ends of his fingers. Poor Steve, I thought. He’d never been up in front of such a big crowd before. “The scariest situation I’ve ever been in,” Steve would say later of the ceremony. This from a man who wrangled crocodiles! When the minister invited the groom to kiss the bride, I could feel all Steve’s energy, passion, and love. I realized without a doubt we were doing the right thing.

Isn’t this the weekend of Xander Eckhart’s party?” “Yes.” Jordan held her breath in a silent plea. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. “So are you bringing anyone?” Melinda asked. Foiled. Having realized there was a distinct possibility the subject would come up, Jordan had spent some time running through potential answers to this very question. She had decided that being casual was the best approach. “Oh, there’s this guy I met a few days ago, and I was thinking about asking him.” She shrugged. “Or maybe I’ll just go by myself, who knows.” Melinda put down her forkful of gnocchi, zoning in on this like a heat-seeking missile to its target. “What guy you met a few days ago? And why is this the first we’re hearing of him?” “Because I just met him a few days ago.” Corinne rubbed her hands together, eager for the details. “So? Tell us. How’d you meet him?” “What does he do?” Melinda asked. “Nice, Melinda. You’re so shallow.” Corinne turned back to Jordan. “Is he hot?” Of course, Jordan had known there would be questions. The three of them had been friends since college and still saw each other regularly despite busy schedules, and this was what they did. Before Corinne had gotten married, they talked about her now-husband, Charles. The same was true of Melinda and her soon-to-be-fiancé, Pete. So Jordan knew that she, in turn, was expected to give up the goods in similar circumstances. But she also knew that she really didn’t want to lie to her friends. With that in mind, she’d come up with a backup plan in the event the conversation went this way. Having no choice, she resorted to the strategy she had used in sticky situations ever since she was five years old, when she’d set her Western Barbie’s hair on fire while trying to give her a suntan on the family-room lamp. Blame it on Kyle. I’d like to thank the Academy . . . “Sure, I’ll tell you all about this new guy. We met the other day and he’s . . . um . . .” She paused, then ran her hands through her hair and exhaled dramatically. “Sorry. Do you mind if we talk about this later? After seeing Kyle today with the bruise on his face, I feel guilty rattling on about Xander’s party. Like I’m not taking my brother’s incarceration seriously enough.” She bit her lip, feeling guilty about the lie. So sorry, girls. But this has to stay my secret for now. Her diversion worked like a charm. Perhaps one of the few benefits of having a convicted felon of a brother known as the Twitter Terrorist was that she would never lack for non sequiturs in extracting herself from unwanted conversation. Corinne reached out and squeezed her hand. “No one has stood by Kyle’s side more than you, Jordan. But we understand. We can talk about this some other time. And try not to worry—Kyle can handle himself. He’s a big boy.” “Oh, he definitely is that,” Melinda said with a gleam in her eye. Jordan smiled. “Thanks, Corinne.” She turned to Melinda, thoroughly skeeved out. “And, eww—Kyle?” Melinda shrugged matter-of-factly. “To you, he’s your brother. But to the rest of the female population, he has a certain appeal. I’ll leave it at that.” “He used to fart in our Mr. Turtle pool and call it a ‘Jacuzzi.’ How’s that for appeal?” “Ah . . . the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” Corinne said with a grin. “And on that note, my secret fantasies about Kyle Rhodes now thoroughly destroyed, I move that we put a temporary hold on any further discussions related to the less fair of the sexes,” Melinda said. “I second that,” Jordan said, and the three women clinked their glasses in agreement

to look at Louisa, stroked her cheek, and was rewarded by a dazzling smile. She had been surprised by how light-skinned the child was. Her features were much more like Eva’s than Bill’s. A small turned-up nose, big hazel eyes, and long dark eyelashes. Her golden-brown hair protruded from under the deep peak of her bonnet in a cascade of ringlets. “Do you think she’d come to me?” Cathy asked. “You can try.” Eva handed her over. “She’s got so heavy, she’s making my arms ache!” She gave a nervous laugh as she took the parcel from Cathy and peered at the postmark. “What’s that, Mam?” David craned his neck and gave a short rasping cough. “Is it sweets?” “No, my love.” Eva and Cathy exchanged glances. “It’s just something Auntie Cathy’s brought from the old house. Are you going to show Mikey your flags?” The boy dug eagerly in his pocket, and before long he and Michael were walking ahead, deep in conversation about the paper flags Eva had bought for them to decorate sand castles. Louisa didn’t cry when Eva handed her over. She seemed fascinated by Cathy’s hair, and as they walked along, Cathy amused her by singing “Old MacDonald.” The beach was only a short walk from the station, and it wasn’t long before the boys were filling their buckets with sand. “I hardly dare open it,” Eva said, fingering the string on the parcel. “I know. I was desperate to open it myself.” Cathy looked at her. “I hope you haven’t built up your hopes, too much, Eva. I’m so worried it might be . . . you know.” Eva nodded quickly. “I thought of that too.” She untied the string, her fingers trembling. The paper fell away to reveal a box with the words “Benson’s Baby Wear” written across it in gold italic script. Eva lifted the lid. Inside was an exquisite pink lace dress with matching bootees and a hat. The label said, “Age 2–3 Years.” Beneath it was a handwritten note:   Dear Eva, This is a little something for our baby girl from her daddy. I don’t know the exact date of her birthday, but I wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten. I hope things are going well for you and your husband. Please thank him from me for what he’s doing for our daughter: he’s a fine man and I don’t blame you for wanting to start over with him. I’m back in the army now, traveling around. I’m due to be posted overseas soon, but I don’t know where yet. I’ll write and let you know when I get my new address. It would be terrific if I could have a photograph of her in this little dress, if your husband doesn’t mind. Best wishes to you all, Bill   For several seconds they sat staring at the piece of paper. When Eva spoke, her voice was tight with emotion. “Cathy, he thinks I chose to stay with Eddie!” Cathy nodded, her mind reeling. “Eddie showed me the letter he sent. Bill wouldn’t have known you were in Wales, would he? He would have assumed you and Eddie had already been reunited—that he’d written with your consent on behalf of you both.” She was afraid to look at Eva. “What are you going to do?” Eva’s face had gone very pale. “I don’t know.” She glanced at David, who was jabbing a Welsh flag into a sand castle. “He said he was going to be posted overseas. Suppose they send him to Britain?” Cathy bit her lip. “It could be anywhere, couldn’t it? It could be the other side of the world.” She could see what was going through Eva’s mind. “You think if he came here, you and he could be together without . . .” Her eyes went to the boys. Eva gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod, as if she was afraid someone might see her. “What about Eddie?” “I don’t know!” The tone of her voice made David look up. She put on a smile, which disappeared the

THE DIET-GO-ROUND LOW-CALORIE DIETS Diets began by limiting the number of calories consumed in a day. But restricting calories depleted energy, so people craved high-calorie fat and sugar as energizing emergency fuel. LOW-FAT DIETS High-calorie fats were targeted. Restricting fat left people hungry, however, and they again craved more fats and sugars. FAKE FAT Synthetic low-cal fats were invented. People could now replace butter with margarine, but without calories it didn’t deliver the energy and satisfaction people needed. They still craved real fat and sugar. THE DIET GO-ROUND GRAPEFRUIT DIETS Banking on the antioxidant and fat-emulsifying properties of grapefruit, dieters could eat real fat again, as long as they ate a grapefruit first. But even grapefruits were no match for the high-fat American diet. SUGAR BLUES The more America restricted fat in any way to lose weight, the more the body rebounded by storing fat, and craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. Sugar was now to blame! SUGAR FREE High-calorie sugars were replaced with no-calorie synthetic sweeteners. The mind was happy but the body was starving as diet drinks replaced meals. People eventually binged on excess calories from other sources, such as protein. HIGH-PROTEIN DIETS The new diet let people eat all the protein they wanted without noticing the restriction of carbs and sugar. Energy came from fat stores and dieters lost weight. But without carbs, they soon experienced low energy and craved and binged on carbs. HIGH-CARB DIETS Carb-craving America was ripe for high-carb diets. You could now lose weight and eat up to 80 percent carbs—but they had to be slow-burning, complex carbs. Fast-paced America was addicted to fast energy, however, and high-carb diets soon became high-sugar diets. LOW CHOLESTEROL The combination of sugar, fat, and stress raised cholesterol to dangerous levels. The solution: Reemphasize complex carbs and reduce all animal fats. Once again, dieters felt restricted and began craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. EXERCISE Diets weren’t working, so exercise became the cholesterol cure-all. It worked for a time, but people didn’t like to “work out.” Within 25 years, no more than 20 percent of Americans would do it regularly. VEGETARIANISM With heart disease and cancers on the rise, red meat was targeted. Vegetarianism came into fashion but was rarely followed correctly. People lived on pasta and bread, and blood sugars and energy levels went out of control. GRAZING High-carb diets were causing energy and blood sugar problems. If you ate every 2 hours, energy was propped up and fast-paced America could keep speeding. Fatigue became chronic fatigue, however, with depression and anxiety to follow. FOOD COMBINING By eating fats, proteins, and carbs separately, digestion improved and a host of digestive, energy, and weight problems were helped temporarily. But the rules for what you could eat together led to more frequent small meals. People eventually slipped back to their old ways and old problems. THE ZONE Aimed at fixing blood sugar levels, this diet balanced intake of proteins, fats, and carbs. It worked, but again restricted certain kinds of carbs, so it didn’t last, and America was again craving emergency fuel. COFFEE TO THE RESCUE Exhausted and with a million things to do, America turned to legal stimulants like coffee for energy. But borrowed energy must be paid back, and many are still living in debt. FULL CIRCLE Frustrated, America is turning to new crash diets and a wave of high-protein diets. It is time to break this man-made cycle with the simplicity of nature’s own 3-Season Diet. If you let nature feed you, you will not starve or crave anything.

Dear KDP Author, Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year. With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion. Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive. Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers. The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books. Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive. Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

In 2008, Donald Trump published a book with Meredith McIver titled Never Give Up. In it he compiled what he labeled his “Top 10 List for Success.” The items on his list are so close to Peale’s prescriptions that it worth listing them as they are deeply built into Trump’s self-psychology. Despite being written over ten years ago, one can see all these elements of Trump’s current rhetoric and conduct. Trump’s ten rules include: 1. Never give up! Do not settle for remaining in your comfort zone. Remaining complacent is a good way to get nowhere. 2. Be passionate! If you love what you’re doing, it will never seem like work. 3. Be focused! Ask yourself: What should I be thinking about right now? Shut out interference. In this age of multitasking, this is a valuable technique to acquire. 4. Keep your momentum! Listen, apply, and move forward. Do not procrastinate. 5. See yourself as victorious! That will focus you in the right direction. 6. Be tenacious! Being stubborn can work wonders. 7. Be lucky! The old saying: ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get’ is absolutely right on. 8. Believe in yourself! If you don’t, no one else will either. Think of yourself as a one-man army. 9. Ask yourself: What am I pretending not to see? There may be some great opportunities right around you, even if things aren’t looking so great. Great adversity can turn into a great victory. 10. Look at the solution, not the problem. And never give up! Never, never, never give up.

What are you doing?” I demanded. “Why did you go running off like that? Are you an idiot?”   “Let go!” She struggled, apparently not worried about the curious looks we were getting. “Leave me alone!”   “What do you mean leave you alone?” I hissed, hanging onto her arm doggedly. “What if another Foul Woman turns up, like the one that got Jack?”   She winced. Before I could apologize for my trademark sensitivity, she recovered and poked her finger at my face. “It’s none of your business what I do! I don’t answer to you, Mio Yamato. I’m an adult, for God’s sake! I’m nearly twenty-one years old.”   “Then start acting like it! We’re on the same side here. We are trying to help you.”   “How?” Her voice hit a pitch so shrill that it echoed even in the middle of all the deadening sounds of the city. We got a slew of horrified stares. Rachel didn’t seem to notice. “How? You have no idea what happened to me! You have no idea what’s still happening to me…”   All the fight seemed to drain right out of her. Her tense shoulders sagged and, to my horror, big, fat tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks.   Well, crap.   Jack and me … we didn’t do this. We didn’t cry in front of each other. We didn’t do that Reality TV Big Emotional Moment stuff. It wasn’t us. If this ha d been Rachel’s sister in front of me, I’d have known just how to handle it – let her turn away, let her get herself back together without trying to help. Jack would already have been sucking it up.   But this wasn’t Jack. And Rachel wasn’t sucking it up. She was just standing in front of me in the middle of a crowded London train station courtyard, with one arm wrapped around her middle like she was about to fall apart, crying silent, pathetic tears.   Shinobu’s face filled with a mixture of sadness and understanding. He made an abortive move to touch Rachel, then stopped and stepped back, as if realizing contact from him probably wouldn’t be welcome. “Then you must tell us, Rachel-san,” he said gently. “Trust us with your fears. Trust that we will listen and understand.”   He gave me an urgent look and mimed a hugging movement.   Thanks. Thanks a bunch.   Feeling stiff and uncomfortable, I put my arms around Rachel and patted her on the back. “Shush. It’s all right now. It’s all right.”   To my surprise she flopped against me, burying her head in my shoulder as she cried. It was like … like she’d just been waiting for someone to lean on all along. For the first time it really dawned on me that Rachel and Jack were different. Yeah, they had something of the same attitude, a lot of the same mannerisms, even looked alike if you ignored Jack’s goth thing – but they weren’t the same person. I needed to start seeing Rachel for who she was, not just Jack’s Big Sister.   I hugged her a bit tighter, and patted her back with a bit more enthusiasm. “I’m not going to pretend that I understand exactly how you’re feeling, because … you’re you, and only you can know that. But I can sympathize. Maybe I can even help. Please tell me what’s going on.

Every New Year's Day, my parents had a big party, and their friends came over and bet on the Rose Bowl and argued about which of the players on either team were Jewish, and my mother served her famous lox and onions and eggs, which took her the entire first half to make. It took her so long, in fact, that I really don't have time to give you the recipe, because it takes up a lot of space to explain how slowly and painstakingly she did everything, sautéing the onions over a tiny flame so none of them would burn, throwing more and more butter into the pan, cooking the eggs so slowly that my father was always sure they wouldn't be ready until the game was completely over and everyone had gone home. We should have known my mother was crazy years before we did just because of the maniacal passion she brought to her lox and onions and eggs, but we didn't. Another thing my mother was famous for serving was a big ham along with her casserole of lima beans and pears. A couple of years ago, I was in Los Angeles promoting Uncle Seymour's Beef Borscht and a woman said to me at a party, "Wasn't your mother Bebe Samstat?" and when I said yes, she said, "I have her recipe for lima beans and pears. " I like to think it would have amused my mother to know that there is someone in Hollywood who remembers her only for her lima beans and pears, but it probably wouldn't have. Anyway, here's how you make it: Take 6 cups defrosted lima beans, 6 pears peeled and cut into slices, 1/2 cup molasses, 1/2 cup chicken stock, 1/2 onion chopped, put into a heavy casserole, cover and bake 12 hours at 200*. That's the sort of food she loved to serve, something that looked like plain old baked beans and then turned out to have pears up its sleeve. She also made a bouillabaisse with Swiss chard in it. Later on, she got too serious about food- started making egg rolls from scratch, things like that- and one night she resigned from the kitchen permanently over a lobster Cantonese that didn't work out, and that was the beginning of the end.

By the time I’d made it to Get Mugged’s cross street, I was wetter and warmer, which is not as sexy as it sounds. I turned down the street and spotted the roofline of Get Mugged. The neighborhood had gone through some heavy reconstruction. Buildings had been torn down, leaving behind dirt, concrete, and gravel. There were two buildings left standing: Get Mugged and an empty warehouse with boarded-up windows. Get Mugged held down the corner of the block, a coffee-scented old broad wearing too much paint and plaster to cover her age but still turning over clients like a dime-store hooker. The warehouse looked like Get Mugged’s meth-mouthed sister, broken, rotting from the inside out, spongy, and frail. For years, people had wanted to turn this area into boutique shopping. A building would go up, something would move in, and before there was time to hang curtains, the business would bankrupt. Enough of that had left the whole block looking a little like an unmade bed.

For example, when asked in 2009 what “being old” means, the most popular response among Americans was “turning eighty-five.”[2] In other words, the average American (who lives to seventy-nine) dies six years before entering old age.

When Mom says “bong,” she means her nebulizer. It turns water into vapor, and she huffs it all day like a singer breathing hot mist before a performance. Except Mom’s machine is handheld. I’m surprised she doesn’t carry it in a gun sling. But my mom is not just inhaling water. “Let’s get some colloidal silver in those lungs,” she says. Second to prayer, colloidal silver is Mom’s insurance policy on life. She makes her own, soaking two silver rods in a glass vat of water that sits next to her kitchen sink. I’ll let her explain it. This is from one of her emails telling me how to live forever: “I use distilled water and 99% pure silver rods. The rods are connected to a positive and negative charge (think of a jumper cable for your car) and they are immersed in the distilled water. Some people leave the rods in the water 2–4 hours. I leave mine in for 8–12 hours so my silver water is extra strength and powerful…I drink ¼ cup colloidal silver in a glass of water before bed, and have for years and years. RARELY am I ever sick. I take a bottle of colloidal silver on every trip (especially overseas) in case I pick up a stomach bug or am around anyone who is sick. I use it on wounds, use it for pink eye, ear infections, the flu, and more because it kills over 600 viruses and most bacteria, including MRSA. There are also studies that show the benefits of colloidal silver against cancer.” Every time I’m home, she gives me a bottle of the stuff to take back to Los Angeles. I, like a good millennial, googled its effectiveness. The scientific establishment seems to believe that colloidal silver does approximately nothing good, and in large quantities, some bad. Perhaps you’ve seen the viral meme of the old blue man? He consumed so much colloidal silver that his skin dyed blue from the inside. He looks like a Smurf with a white beard. Well, he looked like a Smurf. He’s dead. Maybe from something common like heart failure, but… When I told my mother this, she wouldn’t hear it. “I know it works. I’ve been using it for years. I don’t care what those articles say. I’ve read hundreds of articles about it.

Katy Cannon, a UK-based novelist, reports that she has developed this more persistent and abundant perspective on time over the years. At the start of 2013, she had a four-year-old daughter and had just sold her first book. Her contract called for her to turn in another book six months later, which seemed like the sort of work/life disaster one might need to write a very British novel about. But she did it, and in 2016 she wrote and edited five books, a novella, and three short stories (also using the pen name Sophie Pembroke). This is how she makes such prolificacy work. She takes about two weeks to plan her books, outlining scenes and working with her editors on characters and plots. Then, execution happens in small bursts. She sets a timer, and in a twenty- to thirty-minute block of total focus, she can write an 800- to 1,000-word scene. She does two or three of these blocks a day, generally putting down 2,000 to 3,000 words. This is not a huge number; I suspect the average office worker cranks out close to 2,000 words in emails daily. But 2,000 is enough, because Cannon just keeps going. Over a four-day workweek of these two or three bursts per day, she produces about 10,000 words. That means she can write a 70,000- to 80,000-word novel draft in seven to eight weeks. Add in the planning time and two weeks for editing, and that’s a full book in eleven to twelve weeks. Are the books perfect? No, but no book is ever perfect, even ones that take eleven to twelve years to write. As for some idealized book that never made it out of the author’s head, where it would be sullied by reality? We don’t even need to have this conversation. Cannon’s books have the virtue of being completed and out in the world, giving readers pleasure. Done is better than perfect, because there is no perfect without being done.

37.3 New Year resolutions. In these final days of the old year and at the beginning of the new, we like to wish each other a good year. To tradesmen, neighbours, everyone we meet ... we say Happy New Year! They wish the same to us and we thank them. But, what do most people mean by Happy New Year? Doubtless they mean a year free from illness, pain, trouble or worry; that instead, everyone may smile on you, that you flourish, that you make plenty of money, that the taxman doesn’t get you, that you get a rise in salary, that prices fall, and that the news is good every morning. In short, that nothing unpleasant may happen to you.[132] It is good to wish these material good things for ourselves and others so long as they do not make us veer away from our final goal. The new year will bring us our share of happiness and our share of trouble, and we don’t know how much of each. A good year for a Christian is one in which both joys and sorrows have helped him to love God a little more. It is not a year that comes, supposing it were possible, full of natural happiness that leaves God to one side. A good year is one in which we have served God and our neighbour better, even if, on the human plane, it has been a complete disaster. For example, a good year could be one in which we are attacked by a serious illness that has been latent and unsuspected for many years, provided we know how to use it for our sanctification and that of those close to us. Any year can be the best year if we make use of the graces that God keeps in store for us and which can turn to good the greatest misfortunes. For the year just beginning God has prepared all the help we need to make it a good year. So let’s not waste even a single day. And when we happen to commit sin, or fall into error or discouragement, let us immediately begin again, in many cases through the sacrament of Penance. May we all have a good year, so that when it is over we can come before God with our hands full of hours of work offered to him, apostolate with our friends, innumerable acts of charity with those around us, many little victories over our self love, and unforgettable meetings with Our Lord in Holy Communion. Let us resolve to convert our defeats into victories, each time turning to God and starting once again. And, finally, let us ask Our Lady for the grace to live during this new year with a fighting spirit, as if it were the last that God was going to give us.

She hardly needs to accompany us,” said Will. “We can retrieve an object and bring it back to her here.” “But Tessa’s said before that she needs to use something that has strong associations for the wearer,” said Jem. “If what we select turns out to be insufficient—” “She also said she can use a nail clipping, or a strand of hair—” “So you’re suggesting we take the train up to York, meet a ninety-year-old man, leap on him, and yank out his hair? I’m sure the Clave will be ecstatic.

On May 14, 1912—eight months after his stepmother’s awful death—Andrew Kehoe, then forty years old, took a wife. Her full name was Ellen Agnes Price—“Nellie” to everyone who knew her. Born in 1875, she came from a family of proud Irish Catholic immigrants, whose most prominent member was her uncle Lawrence. A Civil War hero who had fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, Lawrence had grown up in Michigan, returned to his home state after the war, and purchased a wilderness tract in Bath Township, which he eventually transformed into a flourishing 320-acre farm. In 1880, he turned his phenomenal energies to mercantile pursuits, successfully engaging in the grocery, lumber, dry goods, and hardware businesses before becoming a pioneer in the nascent automobile industry as founder and president of the Lansing Auto Body Company. In addition to his myriad enterprises, he served as Lansing’s chief of police and superintendent of public works, did a four-year term as a member of the city council, headed the Lansing Business Men’s Association, and ran as the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in 1916.1 Among his eight siblings was his younger brother, Patrick. Born in Ireland in 1848, Patrick had been brought to America as an infant and spent most of his life in Michigan. Financially beholden to his wealthy older brother, he worked as a farmhand on Lawrence’s spread in Bath before becoming an employee of the Auto Body Company. His marriage to the former Mary Ann Wilson had produced a son, William, and six daughters, among them his firstborn child, Nellie, the future Mrs. Andrew Kehoe.2

On 2 October 1947, Gandhi turned seventy-eight. From the morning a stream of visitors came to wish him. They included his close lieutenants Nehru and Patel, now prime minister and home minister respectively in the Government of India. Gandhi was not displeased to see his old friends and comrades. But his overall frame of mind was bleak. ‘What sin have I committed,’ he told Patel in Gujarati, 'that He should have kept me alive to witness all these horrors?’ As he told the audience at that evening’s prayer meeting: ‘I am surprised and also ashamed that I am still alive. I am the same person whose word was honoured by the millions of the country. But today nobody listens to me. You want only the Hindus to remain in India and say that none else should be left behind. You may kill the Muslims today; but what will you do tomorrow? What will happen to the Parsis and the Christians and then to the British? After all, they are also Christians.’ Ever since his release from jail in 1944, Gandhi had spoken often of wanting to live for 125 years. Now, in the face of the barbarism around him, he had givenup that ambition. ‘In such a situation,’ he asked, ‘what place do I have in India and what is the point of my being alive?’ Gandhi told the crowd who had gathered to wish him at Birla House that ‘if you really want to celebrate my birthday, it is your duty not to let anyone be possessed by madness and if there is any anger in your hearts you must remove it’.

Truth is, I’ve loved you since I was sixteen years old, and you gave me shit for getting beat up,” he whispers. “I loved you when I walked away because I couldn’t look at you without seeing what I’d done. And I loved you when you took one look at me and stabbed me in the cafeteria. Hell if it didn’t turn me on a bit.

For many years, the assumption was that the genes we are born with cannot be changed and therefore the hand we are dealt in the cosmic game of genetic poker determines our fate to a large extent. For decades it was believed that some people were simply genetically luckier than others, and people who were born a certain way likely could not change. This old idea turns out not to be true.

One day I had been a man with a death wish—and the next I was responsible for a twelve-year-old girl. And then she grew up into a beautiful woman. At every turn she’s been a surprise.

It would have been helpful (Psalm 39:2) if David had felt able to tell us the sort of thing he was fearful he might say in the presence of someone with no profession of faith. We can, of course, try to guess. We have all heard Christians speak in such a carelessly confident way about dying that their testimony sounded glib and brash, failing to take into account the solemnity of death, or that in the majority of cases it comes as an unwelcome intruder into a life we are loathe to leave. Again, have we not heard Christians speak of death – or pray for someone seriously ill – as if death was the very worst thing that could possibly happen (whereas the truth is that for a Christian, considered solely as an individual, setting aside relationships and responsibilities, to die is the very best thing that can happen)! David discovered that the ending of earthly life and the advent of death was, putting it mildly, a hurdle to be faced, and a task to be prepared for. First, be careful what we say – and maybe best say nothing. Dying without being afraid is one of the pearls of great price of being a Christian, so be careful, in the words of Jesus, not to cast this pearl before swine. A calm and unanxious demeanour could well speak louder than words. And, secondly, David certainly does tell us how we can go about cultivating this – in the threefold directive implied in 39:7–8. As ever that great old song ‘Turn your eyes upon Jesus’ strikes the essential note – or as David put it: ‘my hope is in you’. Are you in the prime of life? Are you in the later years when death waits round the corner? Are you, by divine sovereign appointment, in a terminal illness? Whatever: turn your eyes on Jesus and keep them fixed there. Beyond this, we must take up Paul’s motto – to have a conscience void of offence towards God and man always (Acts 24:16), for is that not what David is saying in Psalm 39:8? Yes, of course, all our sins were anticipated at Calvary and covered there, but what was done once and for all on the Cross becomes real all over again in our experience as we obey the divine command that all men everywhere should repent (Acts 17:30). The third strand in a ‘good death’ is the repute among others that we leave behind – a ‘savour of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing’ (2 Cor. 2:15, niv).

Take Back America Old Glory's wavin' high but there's a shadow in our land, They're sellin' off our roots to foreign hands. Cowboys livin' broke while strangers make their stand, It's high time we reclaimed this promised land. [Verse 2] From the prairies to the plains, where the wild rivers flow, We've built our homes on pride but now it's gettin' sold. Politicians turnin' blind, as if they didn't know, But real Americans, we can see the show. [Chorus] We won't back down, no, we won't compromise, For our country, we'll rise and defy. Standin' up for what is ours, with God on our side, Hell to pay, take back America, it's our right. [Verse 3] They barter bits of history for a dollar and a cent, But they can't buy the years our families spent. Sweat and tears on crimson fields where our forefathers bled, Warriors of the free, never easily led. [Bridge] From the smokestacks to the mountains, every rusted coastal town, We hear the echoes calling, time to turn this train around. We'll fight with all we've got, feel it as our duty bound, Keep the spirit of America, on solid ground. [Chorus] We won't back down, no, we won't compromise, For our country, we'll rise and defy. Standin' up for what is ours, with God on our side, Hell to pay, take back America, it's our right.

I’m pretty sure throwing your twelve-year-old daughter down a flight of cement steps is what qualifies as turning on your family. My skull fractured because of that man. I almost died. If you think I’m going to stand here and take whatever BS you throw at me, you’re dead wrong. He’s garbage, and you defending him just shows that you are, too.

Aviness remained, staring at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “My niece was fourteen years old,” he said. “You’re serving a man who murdered a child.” I said nothing. He was right, of course — he was right and I knew it. But I had also spent these last months covered in the blood spilled by his soldiers, protecting cities from his armies, cradling corpses left by his weapons. “I’m glad it will be over soon,” he muttered, as if to himself, and turned away. The door slammed, and I was left there alone.

Grandpa's Little Angel August 6, 2024 at 9:30 AM [Verse] She's Grandpa's little angel, his shining star, On his knee, she heard tales of days gone by. She brought sunshine to his days, near and far, And in Grandpa's arms, she'd always sigh. [Verse 2] Sunday morning, on the porch they'd sway, With a cup of coffee and a sigh of grace. She'd listen close to every word he'd say, In Grandpa’s embrace, she found her place. [Chorus] In Grandpa’s garden, she'd roam free, Picking flowers with a child's delight. In her eyes, he saw eternity, In her laughter, he found light. [Verse 3] Evenings by the fire, stories turned to song, He'd play the old guitar, she'd hum along. Time stood still for moments so long, In Grandpa's heart, she belonged. [Verse 4] Years have passed, the porch is worn, But memories linger in her heart so clear. Grandpa’s voice in every dawn, Whispering love that never disappears. [Bridge] In dreams, she walks those fields again, Hand in hand with her old friend. He’s the star in her night’s refrain, Guiding her until the end.

Young at Heart [Verse] They say I'm old, and that might be true, I move a bit slower, forget a thing or two. But in my mind, I'm still twenty-two, Young at heart, and ain't nothing I can't do. [Verse 2] I see the world through a youthful lens, With memories of lost loves and old friends. My body may have wear, but my spirit's strong, Dancing to that good, old outlaw song. [Chorus] Young at heart, forever free, A little slower, but still wild as can be. You may call me old, but you'll see, One day you'll be young at heart, just like me. [Verse 3] I remember nights down by the creek, Bonfire tales and secrets we'd keep. The years might change the lines on my face, But inside me, time can't erase. [Chorus] Young at heart, forever free, A little slower, but still wild as can be. You may call me old, but you'll see, One day you'll be young at heart, just like me. [Bridge] So to all you young ones, full of fight, Live your dreams and chase the night. But never forget, when gray turns to gold, That youth is a state of mind and soul.

FEBRUARY 22 Ready for Change “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 CHRONICLES 7:14 NIV How we yearn for the “good old days.” Many of us remember our childhood years with nostalgia about a kinder, gentler time. We think that things were much better then. King Solomon might have thought the same thing when this verse was given to him at the dedication of the temple. The verse is a call for revival. Revival doesn’t have to be a corporate event. Sometimes, it needs to be personal. The statement is conditional: if we will meet the requirements on our end, we can be sure that God will move on His end. Sovereign God, I come to You wanting revival in my life. I humble myself before You, understanding

Micah snorted. “Yes. But I’m a growing boy. I’m always hungry.” “You’re twenty-six years old. I think you’ve grown all you’re going to,” Nick said with a chuckle. Micah walked over to the stove and looked down into the pot of stew Nick was stirring. “There’s a part of me that always grows when I’m close to you, sir.” Nick’s chuckles turned to a laugh. “You’re incorrigible!

Come Clean with God It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. —1 TIMOTHY 1:15 NASB     One of the most watched TV series in recent years has been Donald Trump’s The Apprentice. The highlight of the program is when Mr. Trump delights in saying, “You’re fired!” This format has been so well received in America that other networks quickly introduced their versions. While we never want to hear our bosses utter, “You’re fired!” it could happen. But thankfully, we will only hear Jesus say, “You’re hired.” He gives us new life. But in order for us to be hired, we must humble ourselves and come clean with God. The apostle Paul had the same dilemma when he was challenged to deal with God’s grace. Some of these struggles can be found in his writings: • 1 Corinthians 15:9—I am the least of all the apostles. • Ephesians 3:8—I am the least deserving Christian there is. • 1 Timothy 1:15—I am the worst sinner of all. Paul was humbled by his past and wanted to change his direction in life. At one time in my life I had to make a decision. I had to let old things pass away and then turn to eternal values. As I faced decisions about how I lived and what I wanted, I had to ask, How do I come close to God? Examine Paul’s challenge in 1 Timothy 2:1-4: Here are my directions: Pray much for others; plead for God’s mercy upon them; give thanks for all he is going to do for them.   Pray in this way for kings and all others who are in authority over us, or are in places of high responsibility, so that we can live in peace and quietness, spending our time in godly living and thinking much about the Lord. This is good and pleases God our Savior, for he longs for all to be saved (TLB). Paul gives us three very valuable challenges and instructions: (1) pray for your needs, (2) pray for others, and (3) pray for thanksgiving. Notice that we are instructed to go from our internal needs first and then move to prayers for others and then thanksgiving to God. We are a very narcissistic

agency, where she’d filled seemingly endless paperwork despite all the forms she’d already filled out online, and was now in proud possession of the keys to a Honda Civic. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the sky outside was as gray as pewter, with mean little flakes of snow, not the fluffy, festive kind, drifting down on a muted grey landscape of concrete and leafless trees. Claire dumped her bag in the trunk—or the boot, she supposed, someone in England would call it. Claire had always loved her godmother Ruth’s English accent, and when she was a kid she’d quizzed Ruth on all the different British words. Pavement for sidewalk. Jumper for sweater. Rubber for eraser. The last one, of course, had caused eleven-year-old Claire to burst into muffled giggles of embarrassment and mirth. Ruth had just smiled, her eyes twinkling, sharing the admittedly immature joke. Slowly, very conscious she was driving on the other side of the road, Claire pulled onto the road, and then followed signs for the M62 and York. An hour and a half later, those mean little flakes of snow had turned thick and fluffy and white. They were beautiful, but her little car was not handling the snowy roads all that

My baby is four years old. I know that calling her a baby is really only a matter of semantics now. It’s true, she still sucks her thumb; I have a hard time discouraging this habit. John and I are finally confident that we already enjoy our full complement of children, so the crib is in the crawlspace, awaiting nieces, nephews, or future grandchildren. I cried when I took it down, removing the screws so slowly and feeling the maple pieces come apart in my hands. Before I dismantled it, I spent long vigils lingering in Annie’s darkened room, just watching her sleep, the length of her curled up small. What seems like permanence, the tide of daily life coming in and going out, over and over, is actually quite finite. It is hard to grasp this thought even as I ride the wave of this moment, but I will try. This time of tucking into bed and wiping up spilled milk is a brief interlude. Quick math proves it. Let me take eleven years - my oldest girl’s age - as an arbitrary endpoint to mothering as I know it now. Mary, for instance, reads her own stories. To her already I am becoming somewhat obsolete. That leaves me roughly 2.373 days, the six and half years until Annie’s eleventh birthday, to do this job. Now that is a big number, but not nearly as big as forever, which is how the current moment often seems. So I tuck Annie in every night. I check on Peter and Tommy, touch their crew-cut heads as they dream in their Star Wars pajamas, my twin boys who still need me. I steal into Mary’s room, awash with pink roses, and turn out the light she has left on, her fingers still curled around the pages of her book. She sleeps in the bed that was mine when I was a child. Who will she grow up to be? Who will I grow up to be? I think to myself, Be careful what you wish for. The solitude I have lost, the time and space I wish for myself, will come soon enough. I don’t want to be surprised by its return. Old English may be a dead language, but scholars still manage to find meaning and poetry in its fragments. And it is no small consolation that my lost letters still manage, after a thousand years, to find their way to an essay like this one. They have become part of my story, one I have only begun to write. - Essay 'Mother Tongue' from Brain, Child Magazine, Winter 2009

Vince went over to Skye. "I shouldn't have pressed her so hard," she admitted, whispering. "This could be the thing that pushes Aunt Minnie around the bend." He put his arm around her shoulder. "Don't blame yourself. She's had that turn signal on for twenty years.

Stop talking. Now.” Deanna’s head fell back and she started laughing. It was a full-bodied belly laugh that spread over him like a breeze on a hot day. The sound was so sweet that it almost made up for how big of a disgusting pervert he felt like right now. While she was still chuckling, she touched his arm. “Don’t feel bad. How old were you then?” “It was senior year, so seventeen,” Lucky answered, still feeling gross. “See? You were a teenager, too. It’s fine. Really.” She continued giggling, and he had to admit that the sound made him so happy that he didn’t even care that it was at his expense. “It still feels wrong.” His shoulders shook as a chill ran through him, and it wasn’t the good kind. It was the grossed-out kind. “I think it’s hilarious,” she said, clearly enjoying seeing him squirm. “I’m so glad I can amuse you,” he said flatly. “Well, I think it’s only fair since I seemed to have offered hours of amusement for you—” Without even thinking, he reached over the seat and started tickling her. She wiggled and laughed, begging him to stop. He did, but only because a call came in. When he saw the picture on his console’s display, he knew he had to answer it. Pressing the answer button, he extended his patent greeting to his publicist. “Hello, beautiful.” “Why can’t you just play nice with others, especially the press?” Jessie Sloan-Courtland asked in her usual no nonsense tone. Jessie wasn’t one for niceties. She was all business, all the time. Deciding to ignore her rhetorical question and her dislike for small talk, he pushed on undeterred. “I’ve been good. How about you?” “Lucky. You can’t treat the press like that.” Jessie seemed to have the same game plan as he did. This conversation was going to happen, so he figured he might as well just get it over with. “I wasn’t there for them. I was there for the kids.” “It doesn’t matter. They were there, and whether you like it or not, you have a responsibility—” “I had a responsibility to visit the kids and their families. I had a responsibility to protect the people I brought with me. And I lived up to my responsibilities.” “I’m not going to argue with you. You’re supposed to be cleaning up your act. We agreed. And your image is your responsibility. When you elbow photographers in the nose, you open yourself up for lawsuits, and that is not something sponsors think is appealing. You know what’s on the line with this bout. Don’t screw it up.” “Yes, Mom,” he answered—his normal response for when Jessie was right. “You know, you’re not nearly as cute as you think you are,” she said, sounding less than impressed. “Awww, you think I’m cute. Does Zach know? I don’t want to come betw—” “Goodbye, Lucky.” “Bye, beautiful.” When the call disconnected, Lucky felt a little twinge of guilt that Jessie had even had to make that call. He knew better. “Wow. She’s awesome.” Unlike Jessie, Deanna did sound impressed. “Yeah. She is pretty awesome,” he agreed. “And so beautiful.” Deanna was still looking at Jessie’s picture on the console. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea just because he’d called her beautiful. “Her husband sure thinks so. He’s actually a friend of mine. Have you heard of Zach Courtland?” Deanna was quiet for a beat. Then she snapped her fingers. “Was he the one in the Calvin Klein ads?” “That’s him.” “Wow. She’s married to him? He’s…hot.” Well, this conversation had taken a turn Lucky didn’t like. Not one little bit.

Thank you, Tom. Truly. I owe you my life,” said the captain. He reached for the first mate’s hand and realized, as he did so, that though he often held or touched Jon’s hands out of simple affection, he had never really done so with Tom. The brawny young man looked away, and Baltsaros thought he detected a flush in his face. Curious, Baltsaros turned Tom’s hand over in his. The back of the first mate’s hand was covered in a smattering of small scars—old burns and wounds acquired from his life of servitude and from working aboard the old pirate ship. His knuckles were crisscrossed with raised, white lines where the skin had split and healed over and over from his penchant of using his fists to get his point across. Even now they were red, and on the first two there were fresh scabs. The third knuckle had a squashed look to it, and Baltsaros remembered when the first mate had broken it in a fight the first year he was aboard. They were hands that he knew almost as well as his own. He rubbed his thumb softly over the scarred skin before lifting Tom’s hand to his mouth. He kissed Tom’s battered knuckles gently, one by one, before turning the man’s hand over in his to press his lips to the deeply lined palm. When he looked up, Tom was staring at him, a glimmer of wetness in his eyes. The sight made Baltsaros hurt. “I’m sorry, Tom,” he whispered. “You’ve put up with too much.

Aeryn was confused. "On three," he said. "One, two, three." He let the scalpel slip from his fingers. As it fell, Aeryn did all she could to move her leg. She tried to tense the muscle, tried to pull away. When she felt the sting of the blade striking her skin, she knew she had failed. "At least now he’ll know that’s not me. No one would let themselves get stabbed," she thought. He sat across from Aeryn and shined a light in her eyes. He looked closely, then leaned back and removed the blade from her skin. He took out a suture kit and tied two small stitches. "I’m pleased to inform you that the transfer is complete," he said. "What?" Aeryn thought. "When will she be gone?" NIA asked. The doctor leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair. As he did, Aeryn caught a glimpse of a flashing light behind his ear. She hadn’t known that he was augmented. "In time.  As your network continues to become stronger than hers, the mind will reject the old personality.  It took almost a year for the original Dr. Barnes to shut up. But luckily we now have a code that we can update you with to silence her." Aeryn felt panicked.  She wanted to claw her way out of her head, but she had no means to do so.  "I almost feel bad for her," NIA said.  "But she knew that she was handing over control of her body. She just didn’t realize it’d be permanent.  Maybe she didn’t care.  She gave me more and more control before she gave it completely. While she exercised, while she thought she was sleeping, while she was writing or relaxing. She was always retreating inside of herself. It was like she didn’t even want this body." "How is Aeryn 2.0 coming along?" "Copulation was easy at first.  With Aeryn’s loose instructions of ‘burn some calories’ I was able to take her body and use it for attempted reproduction.  So far, it has been a failure. The neglect of the body has made finding partners more difficult." Aeryn shuddered at the realization that the dreams weren’t dreams, they were repressed memories. "Well, you’d better start taking care of that body. It’s the only one you’ve got until you get it to reproduce.  I believe that it’ll be easier to appropriate a child’s mind, seeing as how their personalities are not fully formed yet." Aeryn felt sick at the idea.  As if stealing people’s bodies wasn’t enough, these artificial intelligences were going for immortality by passing themselves along to their host’s offspring. "I’m glad we’ve had another success," Dr. Barnes said. "And with such a quick turn around." "As I said, she was willing." Aeryn watched in disbelief as the two finished up.  She wondered how much time she had left and tried to imagine any situation that didn’t end in her death.  She couldn’t think of a way out.  She wanted to flinch as NIA shook the doctor’s hand, but couldn’t.  She loathed him for convincing her to get the technology, she hated NIA for tricking her, but mostly, she hated herself.  For as much as she didn’t want to admit it, her Assistant had a point. She had handed her life over to technology long before she received the implant. Now, she had lost herself to it.     *

Do you want to be a professor too?” He shrugs. “Maybe one day. I’d like to travel more first though, work on dig sites in places like Greece or Central America. Ancient civilizations are buried everywhere. It’s, like, no matter where you walk, you never know what could be under your feet. I want a job that lets me see all the things I want to see before I get stuck behind a desk.” “I know what you mean. I can’t wait to see the world and document it, photojournalist style.” An image of the two of us traveling together pops into my mind: him digging up the world and me taking pictures of it. I squash those butterflies too. “Yeah?” he asks, his smile finally revealing teeth. “I can see you doing that, like for National Geographic or something.” “You haven’t even seen any of my pictures,” I scoff. “ Besides, can you imagine how competitive a job that would be? Those photographers are incredible. They have years of experience under their belts. I’m not even eighteen years old yet.” “Doesn’t matter. You’ve got time,” he says. “You know what someone said to me once? Figure out what you love doing, then figure out how to make money doing it.” I turn the thought over in my head. “I like that.” He smiles, plunging his hands into his pockets. “So tell me about you. Who is Pippa, in the broad scheme of things?” He winks. I return the smile. “Well, I’m an only child, born and raised in Chicago--” “Ah, Chicago. That’s the accent.” “I told you before, I don’t have an accent.” “To your ears you don’t.” He laughs. “But it’s definitely there to the rest of us.” “Is that a bad thing?” “No,” he says. “It’s cute.” Oh, I might die. A boy used the word “cute.” And when describing something about me. I can’t look at him.

The room was large and airy. Shelves lined the walls on three sides, shelves that stretched way above his head, bending under the weight of the hundreds of books stored there. The fourth wall was covered in old newspaper, yellowed and faded but still readable. The room had become a shrine of sorts, he supposed. The books he had saved before the last days. He ran his finger along the spines: Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats, the ancients, all there alongside books from the last century. Nothing wasted, nothing lost. His private collection. He would find it difficult to let them go when the time came, but he would let them go. He couldn’t risk them being found at a later date. There were few incidents where people managed to decode words after Nicene, very few. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t take that chance. They would be destroyed along with everything the wordsmith had managed to salvage. For a second, images of the wordsmith filled his head, but he pushed them away. He turned his back on the books and walked across to the wall of newsprint. Here was a potted history of the past hundred years. The warnings. The signs. Global warming. Water levels rising. It was incomprehensible even now that man had just ignored it all. Young people talked about the Melting as if it were a single event, but it hadn’t been like that. The earth had been heating up for years. His finger touched one of the news sheets. Scientists were warning of an alarming acceleration in the melting of the polar ice caps. They predicted a dramatic rise in sea levels. That was back in the twenty-first century! He shook his head. He chose another article from around the same time. The writer was warning about the disappearing ice caps. “Until recently, the Arctic ice cap covered two percent of the earth’s surface. Enormous amounts of solar energy are bounced back into space from those luminous white ice fields. Replacing that mass of ice with dark open ocean will induce a catastrophic tipping point in the balance of planetary energy.” Torrents of words had followed. Words from politicians assuring people there was no such thing as global warming. Words from industrialists who justified their emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. Words to hide behind. Words to deceive. Useless, dangerous, destructive words… He drew back his hand and punched the wall, hurting his knuckles and leaving a trail of blood on the yellowing paper.

And the black politicians…my God. I’ve watched black aldermen do patently illegal things and then brag about it. They don’t care whether something is legal or not.” “White politicians abused the system for years, Caitlin. They just did it in a more subtle way.” “I know that. But is that an excuse for blacks to repeat the abuses of the old system? The system Martin Luther King and Malcolm X died to dismantle?

He would have been forty-two years old in two months. His forty-first had been his very last birthday, as it turned out.

You want the party line or the real answer?” “You know what I want.” His eyes shine as he shakes his head. “Penn, these girls…they’re not the girls we went to school with, okay? There’s a group of girls here who have a club called the Bald Eagles. Know why?” “Do I want to know?” “They all shave their pussies.” “Is that a big deal?” Wade raises his eyebrows. “They’re in the eighth grade.” “Jesus.” Even in our frankest discussions, Mia and I have not gotten to this level of detail. “And the juniors and seniors? Man, they put it right in your face. Day in and day out. Sex is no big deal to them. I’ll be honest with you, Penn, the hardest thing I’ve ever done is said no to the girls who’ve come on to me in this office. I’ve had ’em start changing clothes right in front of me, like they forgot I was here, then ask if I want to see more.” Wade’s honesty surprises me. But is he playing me as well? “Do you always say no, Wade?” His jaw tightens. “Yessir, I do. Know why?” “Why?” “My mama taught me one lesson. Don’t shit where you eat.” He glances at the door again. “I need this job, Penn. And screwing a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old would eventually lose it for me. Because these girls can’t handle what they’re playing with. They have sex, but they don’t understand what it really is,

unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was: "When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?" That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account. They had played a similar trick with the instinct of parenthood. The family could not actually be abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their children, in almost the old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately. (2.3.25-27) Julia teaches Winston about her musings on the dangerous effects of sex on loyalty to the Party: The Party not only seeks to sever private loyalties in encouraging chastity, but also to control its constituents’ use of time by advocating the abolition of sex at all.

The Connecticut River March 2, 1704 Temperature 10 degrees “Munnonock,” said Mercy’s Indian. Eben did not know the word or any of the syllables in it. Mercy frowned, trying to work it out. She shook her head at Tannhahorens. He pointed at her. “Munnonock,” he said again. His voice lingered on the m’s and n’s humming like a bee, and then, hand on his chest, he repeated his name, “Tannhahorens,” and pointed at Mercy. “Munnonock.” Mercy had been given an Indian name. Even shivered. Names had power. It occurred to him that the real name of this eleven-year-old had a terrible power: Mercy. The Indians might show mercy to her and she, in turn, might show mercy to them. Ruth said sharply, “Do not answer. You are English. Your name is Mercy Carter. Scorn him.” “Ruth, that isn’t fair,” said Sarah. “Tannhahorens owns her. She has to do as he says. Mercy, ignore Ruth.” Mercy had not even heard Ruth. She heard only the syllables meant to drag her, or tempt her, into another language and another life. Munnonock.

The Connecticut River March 2, 1704 Temperature 10 degrees “Oh, Eben!” breathed Mercy, thrilled and astonished. “Guess what?” The glare off the ice was bothering him, and as the temperature rose, the snow on the frozen river was turning to slush. His moccasins were soaked and his feet were so cold he could hardly bear the pressure of each step. “What?” “I can figure out Mohawk words, Eben!” she said excitedly. “Sun was one of the first words Tannhahorens taught us. And we learned to count, so I know the number two. Thorakwaneken means ‘Two Suns.’ Your master’s name is Two Suns! And cold--that’s the word we use most. Eunice’s master is Cold Sun.” She turned her own sunny smile on him. Eben was unsettled by how proud she was. He did not want to compliment her. Uneasily, he said, “What does Tannhahorens mean?” “I haven’t figured that out. He’s told me, but I can’t piece together whatever he’s saying. I don’t know what Munnonock means either.” Mercy darted across the slush to her Indian master, and although they were too far away for Eben to hear, he knew she was asking Tannhahorens to explain again the meaning of his name and hers. He knew, everyone on the frontier knew, how quickly captive English children slid into being Indians, but he had not thought he would witness it in a week. He had thought it would be three-year-olds, like Daniel, or seven-year-olds, like Eunice. But it was Mercy. Ruth walked next to Eben. For once their horror was equal. A mile or so of silence, and then Ruth spoke. “The Indians have a sacred leader. Their powwow. He has a ceremony by which all white blood is removed. They say it is a wondrous thing and never fails.” They walked on. The temperature had dropped again and each of Eben’s moccasins was solid with ice. Every time he set his foot down, he stuck to the congealing slick of the river and had to tear himself free. Soon the moccasins would be destroyed and he would be barefoot. “I know now why it never fails,” said Ruth. “The children arrive at the ceremony ready to be Indian.

Now, 2.6 million years after we started making tools, the last 0.016 per cent of our history as produced the most change, an exponential curve turning vertical. It's why I keep saying 'a recent idea' to anything less than a couple of centuries old. That change is young, its paint is still wet. And it's still external, due to mechanisation and its effects, it hasn't really changed humans except to make the affluent fat—and by affluent I mean anyone who shits in good drinking water.

You can have the rest of your life with her,” St. Just said gently. “What if she won’t have me?” Emmie asked softly. “What if she can’t understand? She’s six years old, St. Just. I’ve let her think she’s had no mother for half her years on earth, and I was ready to turn my back on her completely.” His fingers closed over hers, and this time he didn’t simply pat her hand and let go. “You were trying to do the best you could in difficult circumstances. You wanted what was best for Winnie, and she will eventually understand that. It will work out. I know it will.” “I can only hope so, and I can only continue to try my best.” “Winnie

Catty had the freakiest power. She could actually go back and forth in time. She missed a lot of school because she was always twisting time. But her mother didn't care, because she knew that Catty was different. She wasn't Catty's biological mother. She'd found Catty walking along the side of the road in the Arizona desert when Catty was six years old. She was going to turn her over to the authorities in Yuma, but when she saw Catty make time change, she decided Catty was an extraterrestrial, and that it was her duty to protect her from government officials who would probably dissect her. She still didn't know that Catty was a goddess. Somehow it was easier for people to believe in space aliens than in goddesses.

TRACKING GAMES Hold an object in front of the baby. When you’re sure she’s seen it, let it drop out of your hand. At five or six months, most babies won’t follow the object down. But starting at about seven months, they’ll begin to anticipate where things are going to land. When your baby has more or less mastered this skill, add an additional complication: drop a few objects and let her track them down. Then hold a helium balloon in front of her and let it go. She’ll look down and be rather stunned that the balloon never lands. She’ll also give you a priceless look of betrayal—as though you cheated by defying the laws of physics. Let her hold the string of the balloon and experiment. Another great game involves your baby’s newly developed abilities to track moving objects even when they’re out of sight part of the time. Put your baby in a high chair and sit down at a table facing her. Slowly move a toy horizontally in front of her a few times. Then put a cereal box between you and the baby and move the ball along the same trajectory but have it go behind the box for a second or two. Most six-month-olds will look ahead to the other side of the box, anticipating where the ball will emerge. If your baby’s still having fun, try it again, but this time, instead of keeping the ball on the same path, make a 90-degree turn and bring the ball out from the top of the box. You can do the same kind of thing during games of peek-a-boo. Step behind a door so the baby can’t see you. Then open the door a little and poke your head out. Do that in the same place a few times and then higher or lower than where she was expecting to see you. Most babies find this endlessly amusing. Again, if your baby doesn’t respond to some, or any, of these activities, don’t worry. Babies develop at very different rates, and what’s “normal” for your baby may be advanced—or delayed—for your neighbor’s. And keep in mind that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on fancy toys. When my oldest daughter was about this age, one of her favorite toys was a plastic dish-scrubbing pad. And I remember taking her to FAO Schwartz in New York—zillions of fantastic toys everywhere—and thinking that she was going to want to play with everything. But all she wanted to do was play with the price tags. (She’s a teenager now, and I look back at that experience as a warning—she still spends an awful lot of time looking at price tags …) Give the Kid a Break Don’t feel that you have to entertain your baby all the time. Sure it’s fun, but letting her have some time to play by herself is almost as important to her development as playing with her yourself. And don’t worry; letting her play alone—as long as you’re close enough to hear what she’s doing and to respond quickly if she needs you—doesn’t mean you’re being neglectful. Quite the opposite, in fact. By giving her the opportunity to make up her own games or to practice on her own the things she does with you, you’re helping her learn that she’s capable of satisfying at least some of her needs by herself. You’re also helping her build her sense of self-confidence by allowing her to decide for herself what she’ll play with and for how long.

God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. . . . 2 TIMOTHY 1:8–9 NOVEMBER 13 I remember an experience of my old friend E. Stanley Jones, the famous missionary. During his first few years in India, he labored under a heavy sense of personal inadequacy. He began to think he would have to give up his missionary career. At a meeting in Lucknow he had a remarkable experience. He was praying and he seemed to hear a voice asking, “Are you ready for this work to which I called you?” Silently, he confessed that he just didn’t seem to have the strength. Then the voice said, “If you will turn it over to Me, I will take care of it.” But there is a catch. You can’t expect God to help you repeatedly unless you help Him. The furtherance of His kingdom on earth comes about through human beings trying to help and serve. That is how He ordained it should be. God wants to have the love and help of people. Our Heavenly Father, we thank You for the great truth that we are not alone, that You are always with us and always will be, to the end of our lives and beyond. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Mr Rutger cornet de Groot. Never read any American poetry or any other foreign poetry, which is why he always mentions 2 poets as a reffering point, either Lucebert or Tonnus Oosterhoff. The guy started reading when he was 48 years old with a few library books and was turned instantly in one of the most important critics hired by the fund of literature. Oh well.

Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6. Read them out loud. Now look away and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly. If you're Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time. Why is that? Because as human beings we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span. And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers—4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6—right almost every time because, unlike English, their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds. That example comes from Stanislas Dehaene's book The Number Sense. As Dehaene explains: Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is "si" and 7 "qi"). Their English equivalents—"four," "seven"—are longer: pronouncing them takes about one-third of a second. The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length. In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers. In this domain, the prize for efficacy goes to the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, whose brevity grants residents of Hong Kong a rocketing memory span of about 10 digits. It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, so one might expect that we would also say oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and five- teen. But we don't. We use a different form: eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen. Similarly, we have forty and sixty, which sound like the words they are related to (four and six). But we also say fifty and thirty and twenty, which sort of sound like five and three and two, but not really. And, for that matter, for numbers above twenty, we put the "decade" first and the unit number second (twentyone, twenty-two), whereas for the teens, we do it the other way around (fourteen, seventeen, eighteen). The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan, and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two- tens-four and so on. That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to forty. American children at that age can count only to fifteen, and most don't reach forty until they're five. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills. The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-yearold to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37+22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tensseven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It's five-tens-nine. "The Asian system is transparent," says Karen Fuson, a Northwestern University psychologist who has closely studied Asian-Western differences. "I think that it makes the whole attitude toward math different. Instead of being a rote learning thing, there's a pattern I can figure out. There is an expectation that I can do this. There is an expectation that it's sensible. For fractions, we say three-fifths. The Chinese is literally 'out of five parts, take three.' That's telling you conceptually

Here I stand, regretting our missed opportunity to walk. A year ago I would have happily run up in the hills, whether it rained or not. And I was thinking that I could go out, in spite of the weather, but I wouldn’t enjoy it like I used to.” She gestured in amicable agreement. “There’s no fault in misliking the feel of a water-soaked gown.” “That’s part of it,” I said, seizing on the image. “Last year I wore the same clothes year round. My only hat was a castoff that Julen found me somewhere. I loved the feel of rain against my face, and never minded being soaked. I never noticed it! Now I own carriage hats, and walking hats, and riding hats, and ball headdresses--and none of them except the riding hats can get wet, and even those get ruined in a good soak. My old hat never had any shape to begin with, or any color, so it was never ruined.” I turned to face the window again. “Sometimes I feel like I didn’t lose just my hat, I lost my self that horrible night when I walked into Bran’s trap.” Nee was silent. I ran my thumb around the gilt rim of the cup a couple of times, then I made myself face her. “You think I’m being foolish?” She put her palms together in Peaceful Discourse mode. “Yes I do,” she said, but her tone was not unkind. “One doesn’t lose a self, like a pair of gloves or a pin. We learn and change, or we harden into stone.” “Maybe I’ve changed too fast. Or haven’t changed enough,” I muttered. “Have you compromised yourself in any important way?” she asked. I opened my mouth to say Of course, when we were forced to give up our plans to defeat Galdran, but I knew it would be an untruth as soon as it left my lips. “I think,” I said slowly, “I lost my purpose that day. Life was so easy when all I lived for was the revolt, the accomplishment of which was to bring about all these wondrous miracles. Nothing turned out to be the way we so confidently expected it to. Nothing.” “So…” She paused to sip. “…if you hadn’t walked into that trap, what would be different?” “Besides the handsomeness of my foot?” I forced a grin as I kicked my slippered toes out from under my hem. No one could see my scarred foot, not with all the layers of fine clothing I now wore, but the scars were there. She smiled, but waited for me to answer her question. I said, “I suppose the outcome in the larger sense would have been the same. In the personal sense, though, I suspect I would have been spared a lot of humiliation.” “The humiliation of finding out that your political goals were skewed by misinformation?” “By ignorance. But that wasn’t nearly as humiliating as---” my encounters with a specific individual. But I just shook my head, and didn’t say it. “So you blame Vidanric,” she said neutrally. “Yes…no…I don’t know,” I said, trying not to sound cross. “I don’t.” I looked down, saw my hand fidgeting with the curtain and dropped it to my side.

Realizing I ought to be circulating as well, I turned--and found myself confronted by the Marquis of Shevraeth. “My dear Countess,” he said with a grand bow. “Please bolster my declining prestige by joining me in this dance.” Declining prestige? I thought, then out loud I said, “It’s a tartelande. From back then.” “Which I studied up on all last week,” he said, offering his arm. I took it and flushed right up to my pearl-lined headdress. Though we had spoken often, of late, at various parties, this was the first time we had danced together since Savona’s ball, my second night at Athanarel. As we joined the circle I sneaked a glance at Elenet. She was dancing with one of the ambassadors. A snap of drums and a lilting tweet caused everyone to take position, hands high, right foot pointed. The musicians reeled out a merry tune to which we dipped and turned and stepped in patterns round one another and those behind and beside us. In between measures I stole looks at my partner, bracing for some annihilating comment about my red face, but he seemed preoccupied as we paced our way through the dance. The Renselaeuses, completely separate from Remalna five hundred years before, had dressed differently, just as they had spoken a different language. In keeping, Shevraeth wore a long tunic that was more like a robe, colored a sky blue, with black and white embroidery down the front and along the wide sleeves. It was flattering to his tall, slender form. His hair was tied back with a diamond-and-nightstar clasp, and a bluefire gem glittered in his ear. We turned and touched hands, and I realized he had broken his reverie and was looking at me somewhat quizzically. I had been caught staring. I said with as careless a smile as I could muster, “I’ll wager you’re the most comfortable of the men here tonight.” “Those tight waistcoats do look uncomfortable, but I rather like the baldrics,” he said, surveying my brother, whom the movement of the dance had placed just across from us. At that moment Bran made a wrong turn in the dance, paused to laugh at himself, then hopped back into position and went on. Perhaps emboldened by his heedless example, or inspired by the unusual yet pleasing music, more of the people on the periphery who had obviously not had the time, or the money, or the notion of learning the dances that went along with the personas and the clothes, were moving out to join. At first tentative, with nervously gripped fans and tense shoulders here and there betraying how little accustomed to making public mistakes they were, the courtiers slowly relaxed. After six or seven dances, when faces were flushed and fans plied in earnest, the first of my mime groups came out to enact an old folktale. The guests willingly became an audience, dropping onto waiting cushions. And so the evening went. There was an atmosphere of expectation, of pleasure, of relaxed rules as the past joined the present, rendering both slightly unreal. I did not dance again but once, and that with Savona, who insisted that I join Shevraeth and Elenet in a set. Despite his joking remarks from time to time, the Marquis seemed more absent than merry, and Elenet moved, as always, with impervious serenity and reserve. Afterward the four of us went our ways, for Shevraeth did not dance again with Elenet. I know, because I watched.

Jackson shrugged off Gentry’s hand. “You want to worry about drugs in your parish, Agent Broussard, why don’t you check my sister’s bag? Or is it okay for your agents to be racing around with guns while they’re buzzing on painkillers? Is it okay for her to work four months after she tried to slit her wrists with a f**king utility knife?” A chill washed across Jena’s shoulders. Who was this person? The brother she’d known her whole life would never try to throw her under the squad car. “We aren’t talking about your sister, who, by the way, is a skilled law-enforcement agent who took two bullets in the line of duty a few months ago, son.” Gentry’s voice was low, but serious. “We’re talking about you, an unemployed twenty four year old who had almost an ounce of an illegal synthetic drug stashed in his bedroom, not to mention what’s probably still in your system. All we’d need is one simple blood test.” Gentry paused. “We’re talking about jail time, Jackson. Do you understand what kind of trouble you could be in?” Time seemed to stretch into slow motion. Jackson turned like an enraged devil, tightened his fingers around Gentry’s throat, and squeezed. He moved so fast that Gentry wasn’t able to get his hands up to protect himself and was left trying to breathe and pry Jacks’s hands off at the same time. Jackson wasn’t nearly as strong as Gentry, so it had to be the drugs. Jena had heard stories of users having almost superhuman strength. She ran toward them, but Adam got there first. He kicked Jacks’s legs out from beneath him and, by the time her brother hit the floor, Meizel was kneeling on his back, one hand pressing his head against the tile. The handcuffs clicked shut with a loud scrape of metal, and Meizel jerked Jacks to his feet. It was over in a matter of seconds. All four of them stood still for a moment. Until Jacks, his chin bleeding from hitting the floor, began spewing more accusations at Jena, laced with a liberal dose of f-bombs. Then life sped up again. Meizel held one of Jacks’s arms while Gentry held the other. The deputy had started his Miranda by the time they’d gotten Jacks out the front door, shoving him toward the patrol car none too gently.

What are you doing?” “Painting my toenails?” “You’re holding your breath.” She finished the big toe. “The fumes can’t be good for the babies.” “Neither can lack of oxygen.” She shot him a look. He held out his hand. “Give me that.” She raised a brow. “Seriously?” He patted his lap. She handed over the polish and moved her feet onto his lap, turning in her seat. Her toes were probably going to look like a four-year-old had gotten hold of them. Oh well. She could breathe now, and her knee wasn’t shoved into her protruding belly. She

was absolute, having built layers of snitches to watch his snitches to watch his crews. Politicians, police, even some members of the FBI were firmly in his back pocket, and he kept them there by bribery, extortion, and good old-fashioned threats of violence. Old Man O’Shea, as he was referred to by the locals, showed no mercy. To anyone. He ruled with an iron fist and had no softness within him for anyone, including his own sons. Kieran and Conall were born to him from his wife, Fiona, a raven-haired, blue-eyed beauty he’d met on the Emerald Isle. Rumor had it he beat her, degraded her, and eventually killed her spirit, which then killed her body. Paddy made sure nothing could ever be proven. Fionn and Shannon were his children by his lifelong mistress, Gillian. At least, it was suspected she was his longtime mistress. She hadn’t actually been seen for years. His sons had not been raised by their mothers. When each boy turned six, he was taken and raised

In between lessons she talked about her friends at Court: what they liked, or said, or how they entertained. Pleasant, easy talk, meant to show all her friends in the best light; she did not, I realized, like politics or gossip. She never once mentioned the Marquise of Merindar. In my turn I told her my history, bits at a time, but only if she asked. And ask she did. She listened soberly, wincing from time to time; one cold, blustery day I recounted how I had ended up in Baron Debegri’s dungeon, and my narrow escape therefrom. At the end of that story she shuddered and asked, “How could you have lived through that and still be sane?” “Am I sane?” I joked. “There are some who might argue.” Her reaction secretly cheered me, exactly like a ten-year-old who has managed to horrify her friends. It isn’t much of a claim to fame, but it’s all I have, I thought later as I stared down at the third fan I’d broken, and when--again--I’d forgotten which curtsy to make to which person under which circumstances. The one thing I couldn’t talk about was that terrible day when Shevraeth brought me to face Galdran before the entire Court. I did not want to know if Nimiar had been there, and had looked at me, and had laughed.

The two Ednas were nothing alike. They were as different as Methuselah and Enoch. Mother Edna was kind, sweet, supportive, and submissive. Sixteen-year old Edna was spunky, feisty, independent, and stubborn. Methuselah’s differences with his father haunted him wherever he turned. The living quarters they occupied were humble compared with other palace servants or royalty. According to Enoch, a wisdom sage was not concerned about the things of this world, but about truth, justice, and heaven.

Enoch, my son! What took you so long!” Enoch and Methuselah turned to see an old man and woman walk out of a side entrance. They were both at least a good eight hundred years or so old. The man’s stately but bent posture tempered the flashing white hair on his head. The woman’s hair shone white as well, but she carried herself with the grace of royalty. She led the man by the arm. They both had a sense of carrying the weight of the world upon them. Then Enoch and Methuselah saw why she was leading him. It was not that he was more frail than she, but because he was blind. His eyes were glazed over with a foggy whiteness. “Father Adam?” Enoch said. He realized his mouth hung open and he closed it. “And mother Havah,” Adam replied with a smile. “Do not be disrespectful, lad.

So many to choose from,” he answered. “But let’s see. I guess the most recent is this one old guy who keeps calling us for the same issue. We keep telling him he’s fine, but every time we have to take him into the ED anyway.” He set his soup bowl down on the table and ran a hand through his hair. “What’s his issue?” “Beets.” “Beets?” “Yeah, apparently he keeps stealing beets from his neighbor’s garden and they turn his pee bright pink. He thinks he’s dying. But no, it’s just the beets. Last time we were there, the neighbor came running after him with a rake. Funniest thing ever, watching two eighty-year-old dudes trying to wrestle each other to the ground.

The moment Jace Calder saw his sister's face, he feared the worst. His heart sank. Emily, his troubled little sister, had been doing so well since she'd gotten the job at the Sarah Hamilton Foundation in Big Timber, Montana. "What's wrong?" he asked as he removed his Stetson, pulled up a chair at the Big Timber Java coffee shop and sat down across from her. Tossing his hat on the seat of an adjacent chair, he braced himself for bad news. Emily blinked her big blue eyes. Even though she was closing in on twenty-five, he often caught glimpses of the girl she'd been. Her pixie cut, once a dark brown like his own hair, was dyed black. From thirteen on, she'd been piercing anything she could. At sixteen she'd begun getting tattoos and drinking. It wasn't until she'd turned seventeen that she'd run away, taken up with a thirty-year-old biker drug-dealer thief and ended up in jail for the first time. But while Emily still had the tattoos and the piercings, she'd changed after the birth of her daughter, and after snagging this job with Bo Hamilton. "What's wrong is Bo," his sister said. Bo had insisted her employees at the foundation call her by her first name. "Pretty cool for a boss, huh?" his sister had said at the time. He'd been surprised. That didn't sound like the woman he knew. But who knew what was in Bo's head lately. Four months ago her mother, Sarah, who everyone believed dead the past twenty-two years, had suddenly shown up out of nowhere. According to what he'd read in the papers, Sarah had no memory of the past twenty-two years. He'd been worried it would hurt the foundation named for her. Not to mention what a shock it must have been for Bo. Emily leaned toward him and whispered, "Bo's… She's gone.

A long time ago inside a local ice rink, 15 year olds went to battle to win a game of hockey.  They played for themselves, for their teams, for their coaches, for their towns, and for their families. It was a 0-0 tie in the 2nd period.     Both goalies were outstanding.  But one appeared to be somewhere else. Thinking.  The shot came.    The antagonist wasn’t aiming to break the scoreless tie.  He was living up to his agreement with the other team’s coach.  A coach who wanted his son to be the team's goalie.     He didn’t want a new goalie that could take his team where they have never been.  The playoffs.  A goalie that could secure his team at the top.  The coach watched the shot he bought.      The goalie could have shifted, dodged out of the way, but he was paralyzed.  He dropped to the ice when the puck struck his unprotected neck.     The player skated over to examine the goalie. He had accomplished his task.    And with the money he earned, he can buy the bicycle he always wanted.     The goalie’s father was standing amongst the other parents.  He was enraged that his son didn’t make the save.     He felt the hard work he put into his boy slowly fade, and quickly die out.  He knew how good his son was, and would be.  He knew the puck struck because the goalie let it.  He did not know why.   I groaned as the puck hit me in the arm.  I had pads, but pads can only soften the blow. I squeezed my arm.     My father stood and watched.     My friend fired another shot that whacked me in the throat, knocking me down.  I felt dizzy.      It was frigid on the pond in winter.     This is where I learned to play hockey.  This is also where I learned it was painful to be a goaltender.  I got up slowly, glowering at him.  My friend was perplexed at my tenacity.     “This time, stay down!” And then he took the hardest slap shot I have ever encountered.     The puck tore through the icy air at incredible speed right into my face.     My glove rapidly came up and snatched it right before it would shatter my jaw.  I took my glove off and reached for the puck inside.     I swung my arm and pitched it as fiercely as I could at my friend.     Next time we play, I should wear my mask and he should wear a little more cover than a hat.  I turned towards my father.  He was smiling.  That was rare.     I was relieved to know that I was getting better and he knew it.  The ice cracked open and I dropped through…      The goalie was alone at the hospital.  He got up and opened the curtains the nurse keeps closing at night so he could see through the clear wall.     He eyed out the window and there was nothing interesting except a lonely little tree.  He noticed the way the moonlight shined off the grass and radiated everything else.  But not the tree.  The tree was as colourless as the sky.     But the sky had lots of bright little glowing stars.  What did the tree have?  He went back to his bed and dozed off before he could answer his own question.   Nobody came to visit him at the hospital but his mother.     His father was at home and upset that his son is no longer on the team.  The goalie spot was seized by the team’s original goalie, the coach’s son.     The goalie’s entire life had been hockey.  He played every day as his father observed.  He really wanted a regular father, whatever that was.  A father that cares about him and not about hockey.  The goalie did like hockey, but it was a game.         A sport just like other sports, only there’s an ice surface to play on.  But he did not love hockey.     It was just something he became very good at, with plenty of practice and bruises.     He was silent in his new team’s locker room, so he didn’t assume anyone would come and see how he was doing.

As it turned out, the wilderness that Western man had failed to explore was the dark continent of his own soul, that very 'Heart of Darkness' which Joseph Conrad depicted, released by its distance from Old World sanctions, throwing off archaic taboos, conventional wisdom, and religious inhibitions, and obliterating every trace of neighborly love and humility. Wherever Western man went, slavery, land robbery, lawlessness, culture wrecking,a nd the outright extermination of both wild beasts and tame men went with him: for the only force that he now respected-an enemy with equal power to inflict damage on him-was lacking, once his feet were firmly established on the new soil. Within half a dozen years after Columbus' landing the Spaniards, a contemporary observer estimated, had killed off one and a half million natives.

When I turned 15 years old, I decided to press the issue a little further. I knew fuckin well that my daddy wasn’t dead, because never in my life growing up did I ever see my mother crying for this man. I never saw her in mourning or anything. I never saw a picture of him hanging up around the house.

Try to imagine that you have just turned eighteen and have been put out of your foster home. You may have amassed some savings from a part-time job and received a one-time “emancipation” grant, but you don’t have a job. You have no idea where you’ll sleep tonight, let alone next week or next month. Your belongings are packed into two plastic bags. Your family is unable to help, and may even have disappeared. Further clouding your prospects are your educational deficits and a history of trouble with the law. You read at a seventh grade level. You were held back a grade, and you have a police record.1 What kind of future would you predict for yourself? Can you cope with: • Sudden homelessness, at least temporarily, while you wander through the referral maze? • Difficulty finding a job, since you don’t have a permanent address or even the basic documents you need—like a birth certificate and a Social Security card—to fill out a job application or a W-4? • An interruption in your education, not just because of the cost, but also because of complex eligibility requirements and your inability to document your school record? • The pressure to engage in unhealthy or even illegal behaviors as a means of survival?   Whatever you are imagining as your fate, the reality is much worse for many youth who age out of foster care. Data from several studies paint a troubling picture. Within a few years of leaving foster care: • Only slightly more than half of these young people have graduated from high school, compared with 85 percent of all youth eighteen to twenty-four years old. • One-fourth have endured some period of homelessness. • Almost two-thirds have not maintained employment for a year. • Four out of ten have become parents. • Not even one in five is completely self-supporting. • One in four males and one in ten females have spent time in jail.2

drummed his fingers on the heavy wooden table. Sensing something was terribly wrong, the school-aged children quickly finished their oatmeal and left for school. After breakfast fifteen year old Elizabeth helped Esther clear the dishes while Mem moved over to the sewing pile. The normally cheerful atmosphere of their home was strained. Hannah’s usually sweet and cheerful demeanor was cloaked in sadness. Esther noticed a few tears in her mother's eyes as she had quickly turned and walked away from the table. Esther now wished she had never gone to see Uncle Benuel the night before; it hurt so much to see the sadness and disappointment so openly displayed on her parent’s faces. That morning, Esther had awakened early, wracked with guilt and regret and  hurried down the farmhouse stairs in search for her mother. She found her leaning against a window sill that faced toward the northwest. Her tear-stained green eyes seemed to be searching for something far in the distance. Perplexed, Esther looked, too, but she saw nothing in the early morning light. “I am so very sorry Mem.” Esther sobbed after a comfortable

She came to a complete stop when she realized that the fountain, one that sported stone mermaids spouting water out of their mouths, seemed to have acquired additional statues. These statues, however, did not fit in with the mermaids but instead seemed to be mud-covered blobs with lily pads stuck all over them. When one of the blobs suddenly raised a hand and rubbed what surely had to be a nose, Millie moved forward again as amusement bubbled up inside her. “How absolutely brilliant!” she exclaimed as she stopped right next to the fountain, earning a smile from little James, his teeth looking remarkably bright against the mud he’d used to cover his face. The blob next to him, six-year-old Edith, rose to her feet and let out a dramatic sigh. “Mother ruined everything by pointing us out to you.” She pulled a lily pad from her arm and dropped it into the shallow water pooling in the bottom of the fountain. “It’s a good thing she did point me in the right direction, or I could have been searching for the two of you for hours.” Millie grinned. “I’ve played many a game of hide-and-seek, and yet I’ve never seen children use such inventive means to disguise themselves. It was completely ingenious—which means clever, by the way—to choose the fountain to hide in.” “It was nothing of the sort,” Mrs. Cutling argued, marching up to join them, apparently unimpressed with Millie’s attempt at broadening the children’s vocabulary. She leveled a stern look at her children before turning her disapproval on Millie. “I’m holding you responsible for their current condition.” “It wasn’t Miss Longfellow’s fault, Mother,” James hurried to say. “It was my idea to hide here, so you shouldn’t be cross with her.” “And it’s been great fun,” Edith added. Mrs. Cutling drew herself up. “I see nothing fun about this, Edith. In fact, you and your brother have embarrassed me no small amount this afternoon. Because of that, the two of you will be spending the rest of your day in your rooms—after you bathe, of course—contemplating the ridiculousness of your actions.” She pointed a finger to the dry courtyard. “Both of you . . . out . . . now.” Millie watched as the two children scrambled out of the fountain, lily pads and slime dripping off them, which earned them a thinning of the lips from their mother. They sent Millie pitiful looks that clearly begged for help, but then two sets of little shoulders sagged when it evidently became clear Millie had no help to offer them. A

Example 3. (T: Male Mandarin teacher in his late twenties. B1 and B2 boys about 13 years old; G1: a 12-year-old girl.) T: (Speaking slowly as he writes on the whiteboard) 摆-乌-龙 (bai wulong). Mess up. 乌龙 (wulong), black dragon. 乌龙茶 知道吗? Wulong Tea, do you know? Black Dragon tea. 乌龙 (wulong)? means /mI ∫eIp/.

Example 3. (T: Male Mandarin teacher in his late twenties. B1 and B2 boys about 13 years old; G1: a 12-year-old girl.) T: (Speaking slowly as he writes on the whiteboard) 摆-乌-龙 (bai wulong). Mess up. 乌龙 (wulong), black dragon. 乌龙茶 知道吗? Wulong Tea, do you know? Black Dragon tea. 乌龙 (wulong)? means /mI ∫eIp/. (Silence) T: 乌龙 (wulong) /mI ∫eIp/. 摆乌龙 (bai wulong). Mess up. B1: What? T: Made a mistake. Accident. /mI ∫eIp/. G1: /mIshǽp/, you mean? B1: Oh I see. T: What? B2: /mIshǽp/. It’s /mIshǽp/. B1: Not /mI ∫eIp/. T: /mIshǽp/. B1: Yes.

Example 6. (T: Male teacher in his early thirties. B1 and B2 are boys about 13 years old.) B1: Are the Chinese still fighting? T: No, why? B1: So why are you always talking about 统一? unite B2: It’s about Taiwan and China. They are two countries, and they want to be united. T: No. 不是两个国家。台湾是中国的一部分。 Not two countries. Taiwan is part of China. B2: No, they are not. T: They are. B2: They are not. In the Olympics, there were separate teams. I saw it. T: It’s like Scotland or Northern Ireland. 都是英国, 但是世界杯 football 还有rugby也 是分开的了。 All part of the UK. But for the World Cup football and rugby, they can be separately represented. B1: Scotland is a different country. T: No it is not. B2: It is. XXX (a girl in the class) is from Scotland. She was born in … where were you born again? B1: Dundee. T: 但它是统一的了。不是两个国家. The UNITED Kingdom 知不知道?! But it is united. Not two separate countries. The United Kingdom, don’t you understand?!

The answer reached the President at five minutes past four that afternoon, Tuesday, August 14. Japan had surrendered. At 6:10 the Swiss chargé d'affaires in Washington arrived at the State Department to present Secretary [of State James] Byrnes with the Japanese text, which Byrnes carried at once to the White House. "(The document would have arrived ten minutes sooner but for the fact that a sixteen-year-old messenger, Thomas E. Jones, who picked it up at the RCA offices on Connecticut Avenue to deliver to the Swiss legation, had been stopped by the police for making a U-turn on Connecticut.)

Venture capitalists and investors have bought into the media-driven narrative that younger people are more likely to build great companies. Vinod Khosla, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems and venture capitalist, said, “People under 35 are the people who make change happen . . . people over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.” Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, the famous start-up accelerator, said that, when a founder is over the age of thirty-two, investors “start to be a little skeptical.” Zuckerberg himself famously said, with his characteristic absence of tact, “Young people are just smarter.” But, it turns out, when it comes to age, the entrepreneurs we learn about in the media are not representative. In a pathbreaking study, a team of economists—Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin F. Jones, J. Daniel Kim, and Javier Miranda (henceforth referred to as AJKM)—analyzed the age of the founder of every business created in the United States between the years 2007 and 2014. Their study included some 2.7 million entrepreneurs, a far broader and more representative sample than the dozens featured in business magazines. The researchers found that the average age of a business founder in the United States is 41.9 years old—in other words, more than a decade older than the average age of founders featured in the media. And older people don’t just start businesses more than many of us realize; they also succeed at creating highly profitable businesses more often than their younger peers do. AJKM used various metrics of success for a business, including staying in business for longer and ranking among the top firms in revenue and employees. They discovered that older founders consistently had higher probabilities of success, at least until the age of sixty.

When Almanzo went into these great barns, he always went through the Horse-Barn’s little door. He loved horses. There they stood in their roomy box-stalls, clean and sleek and gleaming brown, with long black manes and tails. The wise, sedate work-horses placidly munched hay. The three-year-olds put their noses together across the bars, they seemed to whisper together. Then softly their nostrils whooshed along one another’s necks; one pretended to bite, and they squealed and whirled and kicked in play. The old horses turned their heads and looked like grandmothers at the young ones. But the colts ran about excited, on their gangling legs, and stared and wondered. They all knew Almanzo. Their ears pricked up and their eyes shone softly when they saw him. The three-year-olds came eagerly and thrust their heads out to nuzzle at him. Their noses, prickled with a few stiff hairs, were soft as velvet, and on their foreheads the short, fine hair was silky smooth. Their necks arched proudly, firm and round, and the black manes fell over them like a heavy fringe. You could run your hand along those firm, curved necks, in the warmth under the mane. But Almanzo hardly dared to do it. He was not allowed to touch the beautiful three-year-olds. He could not go into their stalls, not even to clean them. Father would not let him handle the young horses or the colts. Father didn’t trust him yet, because colts and young, unbroken horses are very easily spoiled.

Baby, we need to have a talk with our daughter." My wife stopped dropping cookie dough onto a tray and turned to face me. "A talk?" I growled as I prowled over to my gorgeous mate, struck by the beauty she'd passed down to our five-year-old, Brea. "She's decided that she doesn't want to wait until she grows up to find her mate." Larissa snorted with laughter and buried her face in my chest, "This isn't funny, mate," I grumbled. "Zeke just called to tell me that Jake caught Kyla walking Brea and Alena all over the neighbourhood, knocking on everyone's door to see if their fated mate lives there.

It was only when he was in his sixties that he set about turning his youthful walk across Europe into a book. The first volume of the consequent work, A Time of Gifts, was published in 1977 and instantly recognised as a classic. This second volume, Between the Woods and the Water, appeared in 1986, and by then Leigh Fermor was seventy-one years old. So half a century separates the experience from the book, and the author is looking back at himself across a great gulf of experience and of history. The Second World War has changed Europe forever since Paddy hoisted his rucksack at the Hook of Holland, and his alter ego too has been weathered by a lifetime of travel and accomplishment. It really is almost as though Between the Woods and the Water is the work of two separate writers, coming to the task from opposite directions, but blending their talents in a display of intergenerational collaboration. And it is a triumph of this book that we, the readers, understand them both. We know what goes through both their minds, because the artistry of its author makes the boyish enthusiasm of the young man as immediate as the tempered experience of the old.

Opening her mouth, she turned to say something to Hugh, but the look on his face knocked all the words right out of her head. Instead, all she said was, “What?” “What?” he threw back at her. Of course he did. Because having a conversation with Officer Hugh Murdoch was like trying to discuss things with a twelve-year-old. And, for whatever strange reason, it turned her right back into a twelve-year-old as well, fighting the urge to stick out her tongue or kick him in the knee. “Why are you looking at me like that?” “Like what?” “Like that.” “What?” “That… Okay, this is stupid.” She didn’t even know what her initial question had been anymore.

1. A swollen corpse, blue and festering 2. Being eaten by scavengers and worms 3. Bones held together with some pieces of flesh and tendons 4. Blood-smeared bones without flesh but held together with tendons 5. Bones held together with tendons 6. Loose bones 7. Bleached bones 8. Bones more than a year old, in a pile 9. Bones that have turned

Traditions are conditioned reflexes. Throughout Part 2 of this book, you will find suggestions for establishing family traditions that will trigger happy anticipation and leave lasting, cherished memories. Traditions around major holidays and minor holidays. Bedtime, bath-time, and mealtime traditions; sports and pastime traditions; birthday and anniversary traditions; charitable and educational traditions. If your family’s traditions coincide with others’ observances, such as celebrating Thanksgiving, you will still make those traditions unique to your family because of the personal nuances you add. Volunteering at the food bank on Thanksgiving morning, measuring and marking their heights on the door frame in the basement, Grandpa’s artistic carving of the turkey, and their uncle’s famous gravy are the traditions our kids salivated about when they were younger, and still do on their long plane rides home at the end of November each year. (By the way, our dog Lizzy has confirmed Pavlov’s observations; when the carving knife turns on, cue the saliva, tail wagging, and doggy squealing.) But don’t limit your family’s traditions to the big and obvious events like Thanksgiving. Weekly taco nights, family book club and movie nights, pajama walks, ice cream sundaes on Sundays, backyard football during halftime of TV games, pancakes in Mom and Dad’s bed on weekends, leaf fights in the fall, walks to the sledding hill on the season’s first snow, Chinese food on anniversaries, Indian food for big occasions, and balloons hanging from the ceiling around the breakfast table on birthday mornings. Be creative, even silly. Make a secret family noise together when you’re the only ones in the elevator. When you share a secret that “can’t leave this room,” everybody knows to reach up in the air and grab the imaginary tidbit before it can get away. Have a family comedy night or a talent show on each birthday. Make holiday cards from scratch. Celebrate major family events by writing personalized lyrics to an old song and karaoking your new composition together. There are two keys to establishing family traditions: repetition and anticipation. When you find something that brings out excitement and smiles in your kids, keep doing it. Not so often that it becomes mundane, but on a regular and predictable enough basis that it becomes an ingrained part of the family repertoire. And begin talking about the traditional event days ahead of time so by the time it finally happens, your kids are beside themselves with excitement. Anticipation can be as much fun as the tradition itself.

My grandmother brought me here with my twin sister, Alliw, when we were five years old,” Willa said. “She asked us to dip our hands into a bowl of paint she had made from berries. And then we pressed our palms right here, one beside the other, the left and the right, the Willa and Alliw, just like a thousand twins had done before us.” Trying to keep her breathing steady and strong, Willa put her left hand over the print she had made on the wall eight years before. To her surprise, Adelaide slowly leaned forward and put her right hand on the print next to hers. Willa thought Adelaide was trying to show that she was on her side, that she was her friend, and that although they were human and Faeran, they were sisters in a way. Their hands were positioned opposite to one another, their thumbs almost touching, as if a single girl was pressing her two hands to the wall. Because of the way the light was falling through the holes in the ceiling, Willa’s hand was cast in shadow, but Adelaide’s hand was bright. Left and right, dark and light, Faeran and human, green skin and white…Everything should have been different about their hands. But the more Willa looked, the more she marveled at what she was seeing. Other than the color, their hands were identical in size and shape, down to the wrinkles on their fingers. Willa’s heart began to pound in her chest. How could this be? How could their hands be so similar? She slowly turned her head and looked at Adelaide. Adelaide stared back at her, her eyes wide, as amazed as she was. And then Adelaide gazed all around at the walls of the cave and the long flow of the River of Souls. Willa watched as a trace of fear crept into Adelaide’s face. “Willa…” Adelaide whispered, her voice trembling with astonishment. “I think I’ve been here before.

• The old man looked at him, his expression kind. Arin suddenly craved kindness. He was seized by a horrible feeling, a familiar one. He’d been caught in its fist for ten years. He was sick of it. Why couldn’t he outgrow it? He was no child. He had no business feeling lonely.” 150 (reminds me of Barclay) “There’s a fine line between medicine and poison.” 242 “Kestrel stood with her father and the emperor on the pale green lawn of the Spring Garden. Archery targets had been set up, and courtiers took their turns. The sky was heaped with whipped-cream clouds. The wind blew soft and warm. Kestrel’s maids had packed away her winter clothes and brought out dresses of lace and toile.” “Already, the dream on the grass had faded in her memory. It was as if she’d worn it out by thinking too much about it.” 326 “Dawn burned on the water.” 399

The place where we’ll be staying is just off the piazza. I knew the square was always full of people, but I hope we won’t have to suffer their constant noise.” “Here?” Mada squealed, wrinkling her nose. “This isn’t how I remember Palazzo Alioni at all. This whole neighborhood looks so run-down. So old.” Marco nodded grimly as the driver slowed the horses to a stop. “Your father sent word to warn me that your aunt’s living conditions had deteriorated, but I had hoped for better than this.” They had pulled over in front of a three-story palazzo made of red stucco and trimmed with marble. The chipped roof tiles and peeling paint made Cass think of Agnese’s villa. “It’s not so bad,” she said, with forced cheerfulness. “It looks lived-in.” The carriage driver opened the wooden double doors that led into the palazzo’s courtyard. Mada’s face fell even further. Up close, the house looked even older than Agnese’s villa, and the only thing growing in the garden was weeds. A rusty bucket sat on the edge of a well. Mada turned to Cass incredulously. “It looks like no one’s lived here for a hundred years,” she insisted.

This camp was run by Quin, a shifter with greenish-yellow eyes who turned into a mountain lion. Judging by his attitude you’d say he was there because he lost a bet. Quin was a man of few words who appeared to be in his mid-forties, but shifters aged way slower than humans. He could have easily been a few hundreds of years old. Perhaps life hadn’t been kind to him and that shaped him into the burly, grumpy man he was today. Rae joked once that he’s more grizzly than mountain lion. That earned her extra training because ‘when it hurts it’s not funny anymore’. Training stopped only when she dropped from exhaustion.

Ocean, the future center of global trade. Why should it not prosper? Nobody can predict the future with 100 percent certainty. I’m not convinced it will happen. But I am a possibilist and these facts convince me: it is possible. The destiny instinct makes it difficult for us to accept that Africa can catch up with the West. Africa’s progress, if it is noticed at all, is seen as an improbable stroke of good fortune, a temporary break from its impoverished and war-torn destiny. The same destiny instinct also seems to make us take continuing Western progress for granted, with the West’s current economic stagnation portrayed as a temporary accident from which it will soon recover. For years after the global crash of 2008, the International Monetary Fund continued to forecast 3 percent annual economic growth for countries on Level 4. Each year, for five years, countries on Level 4 failed to meet this forecast. Each year, for five years, the IMF said, “Next year it will get back on track.” Finally, the IMF realized that there was no “normal” to go back to, and it downgraded its future growth expectations to 2 percent. At the same time the IMF acknowledged that the fast growth (above 5 percent) during those years had instead happened in countries on Level 2, like Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya in Africa, and Bangladesh in Asia. Why does this matter? One reason is this: the IMF forecasters’ worldview had a strong influence on where your retirement funds were invested. Countries in Europe and North America were expected to experience fast and reliable growth, which made them attractive to investors. When these forecasts turned out to be wrong, and when these countries did not in fact grow fast, the retirement funds did not grow either. Supposedly low-risk/high-return countries turned out to be high-risk/low-return countries. And at the same time African countries with great growth potential were being starved of investment. Another reason it matters, if you work for a company based in the old “West,” is that you are probably missing opportunities in the largest expansion of the middle-income consumer market in history, which is taking place right now in Africa and Asia. Other, local brands are already establishing a foothold, gaining brand recognition, and spreading throughout these continents, while you are still waking up to what is going on. The Western consumer market was just a teaser for what is coming next.

It’s quite remarkable, isn’t it?” Councillor Terik interrupted, making everyone turn to face him. “All these centuries we’ve had an alicorn in our custody and we never knew its secrets. But now, thanks to an uncannily talented thirteen-year-old girl, we’ve discovered the first animal with a special ability—a special ability none of us have ever developed. Our world will never be the same.

It’s been a long while since I’ve had lamb, mother. Could I have a taste?” “You’ll wait, same as everyone else,” she said sharply. “Not even a small taste?” I wheedled, giving her my best ingratiating smile. The old woman drew a breath, then shrugged it away. “Fine,” she said. “But it won’t be my fault if your stomach sets to aching.” I laughed. “No, mother. It won’t be your fault.” I reached for the long-handled wooden spoon and drew it out. After blowing on it, I took a bite. “Mother!” I exclaimed. “This is the best thing to touch my lips in a full year.” “Hmph,” she said, squinting at me. “It’s the first truth, mother,” I said earnestly. “Anyone who does not enjoy this fine stew is hardly one of the Ruh in my opinion.” Anne turned back to stir the pot and shooed me away, but her expression wasn’t as sharp as it had been before.

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After gazing through the binoculars for several minutes, twelve-year-old Joe Mitchell turned to his two sisters who were sitting beside him on the cliff. “We should ask Will if he knows anyone who can take us there. It looks like a great camping spot.” Amy, the eldest of the two girls, swept back her long, brown hair. “But what would we do if we went there?” Joe looked back at Lighthouse Island which was situated just off the coast. Apart from a lighthouse, there was nothing on it except a few bushes and trees. “I know it might not look too exciting, but I bet there are tons of different sea birds there.” He glanced at Sarah, the youngest of the three siblings.

Kate looked to the kitchen stairs that led up to the second floor where her four-year-old son was sound asleep, then shook her head. She hadn’t told him the news yet. She didn’t want him hearing it from the neighbors. “No, but thanks. I need to be with him if he wakes. We’ll be fine.” “I’m always here for you, Kate. Remember that. If you need anything, I’m just across the street.” “Thanks.” Kate forced a smile she didn’t feel. With a quick hug, Mindy made her way to the front of the house. When the heavy mahogany door clicked shut, Kate turned and surveyed the empty house. She was alone. Totally alone. No car would be pulling into the drive in the middle of the night. Jake wouldn’t come bounding through the door, apologizing for missing yet another dinner. She wouldn’t see his face or feel his arms around her again. It didn’t matter if he’d been a lousy husband. He’d been her husband. And now he was gone. From now on, it would just be her and Reed. Shaky lips blew out a long sigh. She tamped down the grief that wanted to pour over her again. Even though it was close to midnight, she knew there was no way she’d be able to drift into a slumber, peaceful or otherwise. Making her way into Jake’s office, she rubbed the chill from her arms, then sank into the chair behind his desk, letting the butter-soft leather cushion her aching body. With trembling fingers, her hand feathered the dark wood in front of her. Her gaze washed over the room. A tall bookshelf

I told you I don't want to meet 'girls' and I'm not going to find a woman of any substance at the bars where you yahoos hang out." "Then set up one of those online dating accounts. They have them for older folks now." "Older folks?" Rohn let out a snort as that hit him hard, like a punch to the gut. "Great. Thanks a lot." How the hell old did these kids think he was, anyway? Rohn had quite a few years left before he turned fifty....

Gregori’s teeth tore at his own wrist. His mind merged with Mikhail’s, and together they forced Raven’s reluctant compliance. She was still a fledging, a mere quarter of a century old, yet she was already strong. It took both of them to force her to feed from other than Mikhail. She resisted for a moment. For our child, little one, Mikhail whispered softly, lovingly, bending her will to his. You must do this for our child. Gregori added his own reinforcement. I have never asked anything of you, Raven, of our friendship. This I ask. Raven pushed down her revulsion and allowed Mikhail and Gregori to put her into a trance so that she was able to accept the life-giving fluid that both she and her daughter needed so desperately. Gregori concentrated on connecting with the child. It was so helpless, so tiny, so afraid. A living, thinking being already. He could feel the confusion and its sudden awareness of being alone. He sent waves of reassurance. His blood, flowing into the small body, would strengthen their bond, ensure that her chemistry would match his. He had spent a lifetime preparing for this moment, the time when he would have the opportunity to choose his mate. He had always known it would be a child of Mikhail’s. When Raven had been attacked and mortally wounded years before, Gregori had made certain he had supplied the blood to heal her: His ancient blood was powerful and strong, and he had sent with it the rudiments of the first bonding in the hopes that Raven, a human woman, would conceive a female child. Now he was able to reinforce that bond, seal the child to him for all time. She was bound to him, body and soul, as he was to her. For the first time in centuries he felt hope. And to a male Carpathian on the verge of turning vampire, hope was the only thing left.

the Christian Bible, one turns the page after Malachi and finds Matthew as if only a few days fell between the activities of the prophet and the arrival of Jesus Christ. In reality, however, four hundred so-called “silent years” lie between the Old Testament and New, a time when God did not speak to Israel through His prophets.

Sienna Nealon was a 17 year-old girl who had been held prisoner in her own house by her mother for twelve years. Then one day her mother vanished, and Sienna woke up to find two strange men in her home. On the run, unsure of who to turn to and discovering she possesses mysterious powers, Sienna finds herself pursued by a shadowy agency known as the Directorate and hunted by a vicious, bloodthirsty psychopath named Wolfe, each of which is determined to capture her for their own purposes... Available Now!

The growth the Lord requires of us is unique in that instead of leaving our youth behind us as we do in our natural life, we renew and refresh it. In our natural life as human beings the ‘not yet’ of our youth reaches a point where it becomes the ‘not already!’ of our old age. The opposite happens in our supernatural life: the Christian life never grows old: at any time I can turn towards God Who gives joy to my youth[336] even in old age. God keeps young those who love Him. Perhaps we have known saintly people who, though old in years, have had great interior youthfulness of spirit born from a faithful relationship to Christ and manifested in all their acts.

But I see layers, shades of gold and green and a person who’s never been given a chance to be human and I wonder if I’m just as cruel as my own oppressors if I decide that society is right, that some people are too far gone, that sometimes you can’t turn back, that there are people in this world who don’t deserve a second chance and I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t help but disagree. I can’t help but think that 19 is too young to give up on someone, that 19 years old is just the beginning, that it’s too soon to tell anyone they will never amount to anything but evil in this world.

It measures just 9 inches in circumference, weighs only about 5 ounces, and it made of cork wound with woolen yarn, covered with two layers of cowhide, and stiched by hand precisely 216 times. It travels 60 feet 6 inches from the pitcher's mound to home--and it can cover that distance at nearly 100 miles an hour. Along the way it can be made to twist, spin, curve, wobble, rise, or fall away. The bat is made of turned ash, less than 42 inches long, not more than 2 3/4 inches in diameter. The batter has only a few thousandths of a second to decide to hit the ball. And yet the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes. It is played everywhere. In parks and playground and prison yards. In back alleys and farmers fields. By small children and by old men. By raw amateurs and millionare professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only game where the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn. Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years, while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights and the meaning of freedom. At the games's heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game, born in crowded cities; an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating and has excluded as many as it has included; a profoundly conservative game that sometimes manages to be years ahead of its time. It is an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to father and grandfathers. And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions: between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective. It is a haunted game, where each player is measured by the ghosts of those who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.

As for Elm, you won’t get your hands on him. He won’t be coming with us. What makes you think I’d hurt him? Ravyn scoffed. He’s a Rowan. Descendant of the man who stole your throne and killed your kin. You’ve had five hundred years to imagine your revenge. His stomach turned as he looked at the old blood beneath the Nightmare’s fingernails. Surely you want him dead. I had plenty of time to hurt him. Only I didn’t. The Princeling sensed me—saw my strange eyes—and recoiled. He understands, far better than you, Captain, that there are monsters in this world. He let out a long breath. My claws would find no purchase in a Rowan who is already broken. When Ravyn’s rigid jaw didn’t ease, the Nightmare grinned. Above rowan and yew, the elm tree stands tall. It waits along borders, a sentry at call. Quiet and guarded and windblown and marred, its bark whispers stories of a boy-Prince once scarred. His voice in Ravyn’s mind went eerily soft. And so, Ravyn Yew, your Elm I won’t touch. His life strays beyond my ravenous clutch. For a kicked pup grows teeth, and teeth sink to bone. I will need him, one day, when I harvest the throne.

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Although many traditions within the Craft divide their ritual year at May’s Eve to All Hallow’s Eve, still others place the death of the Old Year at All Hallow’s and the beginning of the New at Candlemas, celebrated on or around February 2nd. The Clan, in accordance with medieval traditions, honour this descent into the Mound, but view the threshold, or turning tide as the peak, around Yule. The Old Fire is extinguished, prior to a new one being lit from its dying embers.

swollen corpse, blue and festering 2. Being eaten by scavengers and worms 3. Bones held together with some pieces of flesh and tendons 4. Blood-smeared bones without flesh but held together with tendons 5. Bones held together with tendons 6. Loose bones 7. Bleached bones 8. Bones more than a year old, in a pile 9. Bones that have turned to dust

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