White Ribbon Day Quotes

The Words, Kaladin. That was Syl’s voice. You have to speak the Words! I FORBID THIS. YOUR WILL MATTERS NOT! Syl shouted. YOU CANNOT HOLD ME BACK IF HE SPEAKS THE WORDS! THE WORDS, KALADIN! SAY THEM! “I will protect even those I hate,” Kaladin whispered through bloody lips. “So long as it is right.” A Shardblade appeared in Moash’s hands. A distant rumbling. Thunder. THE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED, the Stormfather said reluctantly. “Kaladin!” Syl’s voice. “Stretch forth thy hand!” She zipped around him, suddenly visible as a ribbon of light. “I can’t…” Kaladin said, drained. “Stretch forth thy hand!” He reached out a trembling hand. Moash hesitated. Wind blew in the opening in the wall, and Syl’s ribbon of light became mist, a form she often took. Silver mist, which grew larger, coalesced before Kaladin, extending into his hand. Glowing, brilliant, a Shardblade emerged from the mist, vivid blue light shining from swirling patterns along its length. Kaladin gasped a deep breath as if coming fully awake for the first time. The entire hallway went black as the Stormlight in every lamp down the length of the hall winked out. For a moment, they stood in darkness. Then Kaladin exploded with Light. It erupted from his body, making him shine like a blazing white sun in the darkness. Moash backed away, face pale in the white brilliance, throwing up a hand to shade his eyes. Pain evaporated like mist on a hot day. Kaladin’s grip firmed upon the glowing Shardblade, a weapon beside which those of Graves and Moash looked dull. One after another, shutters burst open up and down the hallway, wind screaming into the corridor. Behind Kaladin, frost crystalized on the ground, growing backward away from him. A glyph formed in the frost, almost in the shape of wings. Graves screamed, falling in his haste to get away. Moash backed up, staring at Kaladin. “The Knights Radiant,” Kaladin said softly, “have returned.

His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat. After the terror, in the early days of the Directory, the aristos who’d escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the point where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound. And his grandmother, taken with the notion, had her ribbon made up in rubies; such a gesture of luxurious defiance! That night at the opera comes back to me even now… the white dress; the frail child within it; and the flashing crimson jewels round her throat, bright as arterial blood. I saw him watching me in the gilded mirrors with the assessing eye of a connoisseur inspecting horseflesh, or even of a housewife in the market, inspecting cuts on the slab. I’d never seen, or else had never acknowledged, that regard of his before, the sheer carnal avarice of it; and it was strangely magnified by the monocle lodged in his left eye. When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.

Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of ’94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck.

My Floating Sea" "Pastel colors reflect in my opening eyes and draw my gaze to a horizon where the waters both begin and end. This early in the day I can easily stare without blinking. The pale sea appears calm, but it is stormy just as often. I awe at the grandeur, how it expands beyond my sight to immeasurable depths. In every direction that I twist my neck, a beauteous blue is there to console me. Flowing, floating ribbons of mist form on these pale waters. In harmony they pirouette, creating a stretch of attractive, soft swirls. Swoosh! The wind, its strength in eddies and twisters, smears the art of dancing clouds, and the white disperses like startled fairies fleeing into the forest. Suddenly all is brilliant blue. The waters calm and clear. It warms me. Pleases me. Forces my eyes to close at such vast radiance. My day is spent surrounded by this ethereal sea, but soon enough the light in its belly subsides. Rich colors draw my gaze to the opposite horizon where the waters both begin and end. I watch the colors bleed and deepen. They fade into black. Yawning, I cast my eyes at tiny gleams of life that drift within the darkened waters. I extend my reach as if I could will my arm to stretch the expanse between me and eons. How I would love to brush a finger over a ray of living light, but I know I cannot. Distance deceives me. These little breathing lights floating in blackness would truly reduce me to the tiniest size, like a mountain stands majestic over a single wild flower. I am overwhelmed by it all and stare up, in love with the floating sea above my head.

Marry me Abby,” Taylor counters, his words a command and not a request, as he holds up a small blue box tied up with white ribbon. Taylor regards me quietly and then starts to speak with absolute conviction, “You are mine Abby, and you will marry me.

But, as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. She lay curled up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in Harley Street, looking very lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons. If Titania had ever been dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a crimson damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Edith might have been taken for her. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin's beauty. They had grown up together from childhood, and all along Edith had been remarked upon by every one, except Margaret, for her prettiness; but Margaret had never thought about it until the last few days, when the prospect of soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality and charm which Edith possessed. They had been talking about wedding dresses, and wedding ceremonies; and Captain Lennox, and what he had told Edith about her future life at Corfu, where his regiment was stationed; and the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty which Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formidable that could befall her in her married life), and what gowns she should want in the visits to Scotland, which would immediately succeed her marriage; but the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a pause of a few minutes, found, as she fancied, that in spite of the buzz in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and silken curls, and gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap.

I noticed chartreuse lichen scabbing the rocks, the lick and suck of tide against sea-smoothed stones, how every single one of the shells in the bay was different; white limpet shells and ear-shaped mussel shells; kelp fronds, the ones like bronze ribbons, and cream ones like bandages, their stems like bone joints; and, of course, the ocean, that perpetual shapeshifter: one day a disc of hammered gold, the next wild and rearing, like a thousand white horses. I noticed how the ocean had moods, just like a person.

Some said their wingtips were glossy blue-black, shimmering like the bellies of spiders; others said the white bodies and black markings were a myth, and that the only thing to interrupt their black plumage, dark as the moment after lightning, were their gilded breast feathers that gleamed like coins at last light. For all said that the birds took wing only at sunset. The setting sun was said to call them into the dark. They said the birds never stopped moving. It was agreed that the band of thirty flew west following the night, farther and farther with each day until they circled the planet without ever craning their necks to the east. Few had ever seen them, these birds that were the last of their kind, these birds that encircled the world like an unbroken ribbon.

The dude feels right fatherly. Takes her down to the crick to wash the underground off of her. Just can't bring himself to shoot her while she's filthy and starving. There's time. Offers her a cake of French-milled soap he brought all the way out from Chicago. Smells like gardenias if you know your flowers, and the dude does. Snow White knows something's skewed but she grabs it, strips off like it's nothing and climbs in the water. She don't shiver even though that stream has to be as cold as a wagon tire. The miner's crud comes off her in black ribbons. The duded watches another girl come out of the blind mole-skin she was walking around it. This one has muscles like a mountain cat and a kind of pretty he doesn't know what to do with. For fairness he'd take her stepmother six days and twice on Sunday. The beauty Snow White's got has nothing to do with him. She's scarred up and suspicious an shameless. Her pretty's not for him. It's like saying the moon's got a fine figure on her. Maybe true, but what good is that to a man?

First Snow The snow began here this morning and all day continued, its white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning; such an oracular fever! flowing past windows, an energy it seemed would never ebb, never settle less than lovely! and only now, deep into night, it has finally ended. The silence is immense, and the heavens still hold a million candles; nowhere the familiar things: stars, the moon, the darkness we expect and nightly turn from. Trees glitter like castles of ribbons, the broad fields smolder with light, a passing creekbed lies heaped with shining hills; and though the questions that have assailed us all day remain—not a single answer has been found— walking out now into the silence and the light under the trees, and through the fields, feels like one.

She was already dressed for the day in a simple blue gown, her hair in a loose braid tied with a white ribbon. How apt it was that she'd been named for the showiest of wildflowers, rich and vivid, a gleaming finish to the bloom. Her blue eyes surveyed him with such attentive warmth that he felt a catch in his chest, a dart of pleasure-pain.

What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful? It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges? I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want. When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking 'Is this the one I am too appear for, Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar? Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus, Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules. Is this the one for the annunciation? My god, what a laugh!' But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me. I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button. I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year. After all I am alive only by accident. I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way. Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains, The diaphanous satins of a January window White as babies' bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory! It must be a tusk there, a ghost column. Can you not see I do not mind what it is. Can you not give it to me? Do not be ashamed--I do not mind if it is small. Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity. Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam, The glaze, the mirrory variety of it. Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate. I know why you will not give it to me, You are terrified The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it, Bossed, brazen, an antique shield, A marvel to your great-grandchildren. Do not be afraid, it is not so. I will only take it and go aside quietly. You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle, No falling ribbons, no scream at the end. I do not think you credit me with this discretion. If you only knew how the veils were killing my days. To you they are only transparencies, clear air. But my god, the clouds are like cotton. Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide. Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in, Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million Probable motes that tick the years off my life. You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine----- Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole? Must you stamp each piece purple, Must you kill what you can? There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me. It stands at my window, big as the sky. It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history. Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger. Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it. Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil. If it were death I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes. I would know you were serious. There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday. And the knife not carve, but enter Pure and clean as the cry of a baby, And the universe slide from my side.

I looked into the display window this morning. On a white marble shelf are aligned innumerable boxes, packages, cornets of silver and gold paper, rosettes, bells, flowers, hearts, and long curls of multicolored ribbon. In glass bells and dishes lie the chocolates, the pralines, Venus's nipples, truffles, mendiants, candied fruits, hazelnut clusters, chocolate seashells, candied rose petals, sugared violets... Protected from the sun by the half-blind that shields them, they gleam darkly, like sunken treasure, Aladdin's cave of sweet clichés. And in the middle she has built a magnificent centerpiece. A gingerbread house, walls of chocolate-coated pain d'épices with the detail piped on in silver and gold icing, roof tiles of florentines studded with crystallized fruits, strange vines of icing and chocolate growing up the walls, marzipan birds singing in chocolate trees... And the witch herself, dark chocolate from the top of her pointed hat to the hem of her long cloak half-astride a broomstick that is in reality a giant guimauve, the long twisted marshmallows that dangle from the stalls of sweet-vendors on carnival days...

5-4-10 Tuesday 8:00 A.M. Made a large batch of chili and spaghetti to freeze yesterday. And some walnut fudge! Relieved the electricity is still on. It’s another beautiful sunny day with fluffy white clouds drifting by. The last cloud bank looked like a dog with nursing pups. I open the window and let in some fresh air filled with the scent of apple and plum blossoms and flowering lilacs. Feels like it’s close to 70 degrees. There’s a boy on a skate board being pulled along by his St. Bernard, who keeps turning around to see if his young friend is still on board. I’m thinking of a scene still vividly displayed in my memory. I was nine years old. I cut through the country club on my way home from school and followed a narrow stream, sucking on a jawbreaker from Ben Franklins, and I had some cherry and strawberry pixie straws, and banana and vanilla taffy inside my coat pocket. The temperature was in the fifties so it almost felt like spring. There were still large patches of snow on the fairways in the shadows and the ground was soggy from the melt off. Enthralled with the multi-layers of ice, thin sheets and tiny ice sickles gleaming under the afternoon sun, dripping, streaming into the pristine water below, running over the ribbons of green grass, forming miniature rapids and gently flowing rippling waves and all the reflections of a crystal cathedral, merging with the hidden world of a child. Seemingly endless natural sculptures. Then the hollow percussion sounds of the ice thudding, crackling under my feet, breaking off little ice flows carried away into a snow-covered cavern and out the other side of the tunnel. And I followed it all the way to bridge under Maple Road as if I didn't have a care in the world.

Saturday morning brought an Imbolc gift of thick fog, as our select company of three set off onto the rain-sodden moor. ‘Here we are,’ said Mrs Darley, as the well appeared before us after a ten minute climb. She immediately began to unwrap a joint offering from Phyllis and herself of an ivy swag interwoven with white ribbons and laid it across the lintel of the well. I followed suit but with a far more modest bunch of pine branches and silver honesty. ‘Drinks, dear?’ Mrs Darley looked at Phyllis, who right on cue produced three paper cups from her bag and filled them with whiskey from a hip flask.

Hair tickled her neck in a way it hadn’t done since she was six—the first time she’d taken a pair of scissors to her hair, to eliminate the need for the ridiculous ribbons Maman had insisted on tying in it. That day, she’d learned what happened when she crossed one of Sophie De Wilde’s invisible lines, and she hadn’t been able to sit at her desk chair without pain for hours. But Maman wasn’t here to see. To judge. To punish. Or to decide that it wasn’t deserving of punishment. She had never drawn the lines in the same place twice. The second time Margot had cut her own hair, at age ten, it had simply been because it was annoying her, not in rebellion. Maman hadn’t punished her that time, and it wasn’t because she’d left it longer—below her shoulders, no ends tickling her neck. It had been because it hadn’t been meant to hurt anyone. “It is the heart that matters,” Maman had said as she evened out the edges that second time. “The motivation.

On the day of the agni pariksha, light transfixed Amar’s face. “I have every faith in you, my love,” he said, trailing fingers along my jaw. “This will put an end to every rumor. This will keep you safe from them. I know our days have been cold, but after this, we will be as we once were.” Inside, my heart snarled, but I kept my face blank. “I will not disappoint.” All the members of the Otherworld assembled for my trial. I wore white, the dress of mourning. In the Night Bazaar, a dim glow lit up the faces of the attendees, clinging to well-oiled horns and scaled skin. Leonine rakshasa waited patiently, weapons quivering in their grip. If I failed, they were free to depose me. If I succeeded, they would end their bloodshed in the human realms. Sacred flames lapped up from the ground. Ribbons of fire snaked out like tongues and grasping hands. I looked to Amar. His face was stern. Hopeful. For what outcome, I thought I knew. But I was wrong.

A silver hairbrush, old and surely precious, with a little leopard's head for London stamped near the bristles. A white dress, small and pretty, the sort of old-fashioned dress Cassandra had never seen, let alone owned- the girls at school would laugh if she wore such a thing. A bundle of papers tied together with a pale blue ribbon. Cassandra let the bow slip loose between her fingertips and brushed the ends aside to see what lay beneath. A picture, a black-and-white sketch. The most beautiful woman Cassandra had ever seen, standing beneath a garden arch. No, not an arch, a leafy doorway, the entrance to a tunnel of trees. A maze, she thought suddenly. The strange word came into her mind fully formed. Scores of little black lines combined like magic to form the picture, and Cassandra wondered what it would feel like to create such a thing. The image was oddly familiar and at first she couldn't think how that could be. Then she realized- the woman looked like someone from a children's book. Like an illustration from an olden-days fairy tale, the maiden who turns into a princess when the handsome prince sees beyond her ratty clothing.

And she knew her defiance in escaping his grasp, even temporarily, had shown Jasu the depth of her strength. In the months afterward, though he behaved awkwardly, he had allowed her the time and space she needed. It was the first genuine show of respect he had made toward her in their four years of marriage. Jasu’s parents made no such concession, their latent disappointment growing into relentless criticism of her for failing to bear a son.Kavita walks outside and spreads her mat on the rough stone steps, where she sits facing the rising sun in the east She lights the small ghee-soaked diya and thin stick of incense, and then closes her eyes in prayer. The wisp of fragrant smoke slowly circles its way up into the air and around her. She breathes deeply and thinks, as always, of the baby girls she has lost. She rings the small silver bell and chants softly. She sees their faces and their small bodies, she hears their cries and feels their tiny fingers wrap around hers. And always, she hears the sound of Usha’s desperate cry echoing behind the closed doors of the orphanage. She allows herself to get lost in the depths of her grief. After she has chanted and sung and wept for some time, she tries to envision the babies at peace, wherever they are. She pictures Usha as a little girl, her hair wound in two braids, each tied with a white ribbon. The image of the girl in her mind is perfectly clear: smiling, running, and playing with children, eating her meals and sleeping alongside the others in the orphanage.Every morning, Kavita sits in the same place outside her home with her eyes closed until the stormy feelings peak and then, very gradually, subside. She waits until she can breathe evenly again. By the time she opens her eyes, her face is wet and the incense has burned down to a small pile of soft ash. The sun is a glowing orange ball on the horizon, and the villagers are beginning to stir around her. She always ends her puja by touching her lips to the one remaining silver bangle on her wrist, reconciling herself to the only thing she has left of her daughters. These daily rituals have brought her comfort and, over time, some healing. She can carry herself through the rest of the day with these peaceful images of Usha in her mind. Each day becomes more bearable. As days turn to weeks, and weeks to months, Kavita feels her bitterness toward Jasu soften. After several months, she allows him to touch her and then, to reach for her at night.

The perfect girl what can I say; to be so close yet, feel miles away. I want to run to her, but have to walk out the door going the other way. The only words spoken to her are- ‘Have a nice day.’ I think about her and the summer, and what it could have been with her. It reminds me of- sixteen, you are on my mind all the time. I think about you. It is like a vision of the stars shining, ribbon wearing, bracelet making, and holding hands forever. All the sunflowers in the hayfields and kissing in the rain, no more brick walls, no more falling teardrops of pain, and no more jigsaw puzzle pieces would remain. True love should not be such a game; does she feel the same. She is everything that I cannot have, and everything I lack. What if every day could be like this- Diamond rings, football games, and movies on the weekends? It is easy to see she belongs to me; she is everything that reminds me of ‘sixteen’ everything that is in my dreams. Everything she does is amazing, but then again, I am just speculating, and fantasizing about Nevaeh Natalie, who just turned the age of sixteen! Nevaeh- I recall my first boy kiss was not at all, what I thought it was going to be like. I was wearing a light pink dress, and flip-flops that were also pink with white daisy flowers printed on them. I loosened my ponytail and flipped out my hair until my hair dropped down my back, and around my shoulders. That gets A guy going every time, so I have read online. He was wearing ripped-up jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. He said that- ‘My eyes sparkled in blue amazement, which was breathtaking, that he never saw before.’ Tell me another line… I was thinking, while Phil Collins ‘Take Me Home’ was playing in the background. I smiled at him, he began to slowly lean into me, until our lips locked. So, enjoy, he kissed me, and my heart was all aflutter. When it happened, I felt like I was floating, and my stomach had butterflies. My eyes fastened shut with no intentions of me doing so during the whole thing. When my eyes unfastened my feelings of touch engaged, and I realized that his hands are on my hips. His hands slowly moved up my waist, and my body. I was trembling from the exhilaration. Plus, one thing led to another. It was sort of my first time, kissing and playing with him you know a boy, oh yet not really, I had gotten to do some things with Chiaz before like, in class as he sat next to me. I would rub my hand on it under the desks- yeah, he liked that, and he would be. Oh, how could I forget this… there was this one time in the front seat of his Ford pickup truck, we snuck off… and this was my first true time gulping down on him, for a lack of a better term. As I had my head in his lap and was about to move up for him to go in me down there, I was about to get on top and let him in me. When we both heard her this odd, yet remarkably loud scream of bloody murder! Ava was saying- ‘You too were going to fuck! What the fuck is going on here? Anyways, Ava spotted us before he got to ‘Take me!

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE

Never Let Me Down" (feat. Jay-Z, J-Ivy) [Intro:] Yeah Grandmama Told you I won't let you down Told you I won't let this rap game change me, right? [Chorus:] When it comes to being true, at least true to me One thing I found,one thing I found Oh no you'll neva let me down, Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) [Jay-Z:] Yo, yo first I snatched the street then I snatched the charts, First had they ear now I hav they're heart, Rappers came and went, I've been hear from the start, Seen them put it together Watch them take it apart, See the Rovers roll up wit ribbons I've seen them re-poed, re-sold and re-driven So when I reload, he holds #1 position When u hot I'm hot And when your feet cold, mines is sizzelin It's plain to see Nigga's can't f*** wit me Cuz ima be that nigga fo life This is not an image This is God given This is hard liven Mixed wit crystal sipping It's the most consistent Hov Give you the most hits you can fit inside a whole disc and Nigga I'm home on these charts, y'all niggaz visitin It's Hov tradition, Jeff Gordan of rap I'm back to claim pole position, holla at ya boy [Chorus] [Kanye West:] I get down for my grandfather who took my momma Made her sit that seat where white folks ain't wanna us to eat At the tender age of 6 she was arrested for the sit in With that in my blood I was born to be different Now niggas can't make it to ballots to choose leadership But we can make it to Jacob and to the dealership That's why I hear new music And I just don't be feeling it Racism still alive they just be concealing it But I know they don't want me in the damn club They even made me show I.D to get inside of Sam's club I did dirt and went to church to get my hands scrubbed Swear I've been baptised at least 3 or 4 times But in the land where nigga's praise Yukons and getting paid It gon' take a lot more than coupons to get us saved Like it take a lot more than do-rags to get your waves Noting sadder than that day my girl father past away So I promised to Mr Rany I'm gonna marry your daughter And u know I gotta thank u for they way that she was brought up And I know that u were smiling when u see that car I bought her And u sent tears from heaven when u seen my car get balled up But I can't complaint what the accident did to my Left Eye Cuz look what a accident did to Left Eye First Aaliyah and now romeo must die I know a got angels watching me from the other side

I suppose if one takes into account the lack of an ethics committee to oversee my dad’s childrearing methodologies, the experiments started innocently enough. In the early part of the twentieth century, the behaviorists Watson and Rayner, in an attempt to prove that fear was a learned behavior, exposed nine-month-old “Little Albert” to neutral stimuli like white rats, monkeys, and sheaves of burned newsprint. Initially, the baby test subject was unperturbed by the series of simians, rodents, and flames, but after Watson repeatedly paired the rats with unconscionably loud noises, over time “Little Albert” developed a fear not only of white rats but of all things furry. When I was seven months, Pops placed objects like toy police cars, cold cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Richard Nixon campaign buttons, and a copy of The Economist in my bassinet, but instead of conditioning me with a deafening clang, I learned to be afraid of the presented stimuli because they were accompanied by him taking out the family .38 Special and firing several window-rattling rounds into the ceiling, while shouting, “Nigger, go back to Africa!” loud enough to make himself heard over the quadraphonic console stereo blasting “Sweet Home Alabama” in the living room. To this day I’ve never been able to sit through even the most mundane TV crime drama, I have a strange affinity for Neil Young, and whenever I have trouble sleeping, I don’t listen to recorded rainstorms or crashing waves but to the Watergate tapes.

On October 26, 2016—less than two weeks to election day—travel writer Zach Everson covered the ribbon cutting at the Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington, DC, just a few blocks from the White House. Everson frequently covered hotel openings, which often featured lavish food spreads and “the owners sipping champagne with a few travel writers.” But this one was different. A horde of political reporters trailed Donald and Ivanka Trump as they toured the hotel. “The political reporters were amazed they had complimentary pastries,” Everson said in an interview. 1 A couple months later, Everson got an assignment from Condé Nast Traveller to cover the growing political and social scene at the hotel. In the course of researching that story, Everson booked a night at the hotel. One of his fellow guests told Everson he was about to leave for a restaurant outside the hotel, when he noticed workers polishing the banisters and the manager nervously pacing. The guest concluded, correctly, that the president was on his way, cancelled his outside reservation, and ate at the hotel instead. To track presidential comings and goings for his story, Everson started monitoring social media feeds. And he noticed something: not even a year into Trump’s presidency, the hotel had become a unique locale in Washington. “It became like Melville’s white whale,” Everson said. “If you want it to be your opportunity and a place for you to go and rub elbows with the President, it’s that. If you’re a lobbyist or a businessman or a foreign leader and want to portray you are close to the president, it’s that too. It’s everything you hate or love about Donald Trump.” Everson quit travel writing to cover, full time, the Trump International Hotel. He began publishing a newsletter, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue. He had plenty of material.

The ultimate reason why the democratic impulse is so strong—why we resist such differences—is that the sinful heart resents the final discrimination made in the judgment of God when He separates the sheep from the goats. Spelling tests smack of the Last Day. The way we manage our schools shows how, deep down, we would really like to abolish the Great White Throne Judgment. This resistance extends from the democratic government school system down to the most trivial awards ceremony. And judging from our awards ceremonies, many modern educators do not want God to separate the sheep from the goats. They want Him to hand out participant ribbons to all.

It was a glorious evening, the sun seeming to hesitate in the process of setting, as if it couldn't bear to end the day. It was teetering on the horizon, throwing ribbons of pink and mauve across the sky like life ropes, and the air was sweet with jasmine. They'd brought the white cane chairs down from the house, and Anthony, having spent the afternoon entertaining the girls, had finally opened the newspaper he'd brought with him, only to fall into a doze behind it. Edwina, the new puppy, was leaping about at Eleanor's feet, pouncing on a ball the girls had found for her, and Eleanor was rolling it gently along the cooling lawn, laughing fondly as the puppy tripped over her ears to fetch it back. She was teasing the little dog, lifting the ball just out of reach for the pleasure of seeing her balance on her hind legs, cycle her little paws in the air, and then snap at it with her teeth. They were sharp teeth. The puppy had already managed to tear holes in most of Eleanor's stockings. Darling little menace, she had a sixth sense for rooting out the things she shouldn't have, but it was impossible to be cross with her. She only had to look up with those big brown eyes and cock her head just so and Eleanor melted. She'd wanted a dog when she was a girl, but her mother had declared them "filthy beasts" and that was that.

this.' Alice nodded but didn't move. Miss Dread stepped in front of her and walked up the ladder. 'Follow me,' she held out her hand, which Alice promptly took, and they both stepped onto the dragon's belly together. Leading Alice towards the center of Dexter's belly, Miss Dread grasped both her hands and they jumped, gradually going higher and higher until Alice's shrieks turned into giggles and her frown turned into a smile. 'Darling, I knew you could do it,' she gave Alice a congratulatory grin, as she helped her down off the ladder. 'Now my darlings, who is next?' Miss Dread looked warmly at the girls. All the girls had a turn, and they were all forced to admit that it was the funniest and most enjoyable fitness lesson they had ever had. A few days earlier, Charlotte would never have believed that using a dragon's belly as a trampoline was possible, but now she knew differently. This Academy had opened a door into a new world, one where anything seemed possible, and Charlotte was excited to see what would happen next. 'Darlings, darlings, fantastic, you were all fantastic!' Miss Dread pulled out her wand and made a gold medallion with a long white ribbon appear. 'I give medals out to those who I feel might deserve them the most. Today, I have a certain girl in mind.' She looked directly at Alice. 'You, darling, you have shown us all that it's okay to be scared and that overlooking fear is a triumph that should be

My siblings and I played in front of the bomb shelter entrance, waiting to be picked up by our grandfather,’ she recalls.38 Then, at 11:02am, the sky turned bright white. My siblings and I were knocked off our feet and violently slammed back into the bomb shelter. We had no idea what had happened. As we sat there shell-shocked and confused, heavily injured burn victims came stumbling into the bomb shelter en masse. Their skin had peeled off their bodies and faces and hung limply down on the ground, in ribbons. Their hair was burnt down to a few measly centimeters from the scalp. Many of the victims collapsed as soon as they reached the bomb shelter entrance, forming a massive pile of contorted bodies. The stench and heat were unbearable. My siblings and I were trapped in there for three days. Finally, my grandfather found us and we made our way back to our home. I will never forget the hellscape that awaited us. Half burnt bodies lay stiff on the ground, eye balls gleaming from their sockets. Cattle lay dead along the side of the road, their abdomens grotesquely large and swollen. Thousands of bodies bobbed up and down the river, bloated and purplish from soaking up the water. ‘Wait! Wait!’ I pleaded, as my grandfather treaded a couple paces ahead of me. I was terrified of being left behind.

she could sell in the café provisions she baked in her own time with a shelf life longer than pastries. When she thought of it there had been a rush of certainty she could do it, and a prickling of pride in having conceived a way to make money on her own. It would double at least what she was making now. Without Nicholas it might never had occurred to her. The other day he had stuck a label, which he had found in the junk drawer, on a plastic-wrapped loaf of banana bread. He wrote on the label with a marker, "From the Summer Kitchen Bakery." She had found the gesture adorable at the time and hugged him, but something about it had evidently started percolating in the recesses of her mind, and now she was lapping at the brew like someone tasting it for the first time and wondering how she had never before tasted such ambition. She was thinking of cellophane-packaged chocolate brownies and caramel blondies and orange-and-almond biscotti and pear and oat slices and butter shortbread and Belgian chocolate truffles, marmalades, chutney, relishes, and jellies beautified in jars with black-and-white gingham hats and black-and-white ribbon tied above skirted brims. She could even sell a muesli mix she had developed, full of organic cranberries and nuts and the zest of unwaxed lemons. And she wouldn't change Nicholas's label at all. A child's handwriting impressed that the goods were homemade. She would have his design printed professionally, in black and white, too, old world, like the summer kitchen itself.

Every Sunday, we go to Freedom Church. Ray believes in God and in looking at all the little girls in their Sunday best, ribbons and bows and tiny socks with lace on them. The day I got too tall to wear the white dress with short, puffy sleeves and little tucks along the chest, he filled the kitchen sink with water and shoved my head into it. I was 13 then. And when I tried to stay down after he'd held me there, lungs burning, inside of my head going dark, he hauled me out and slapped me so hard the right side of my face grew a hand-shaped bruise, jaw to forehead. I couldn't go outside for a week. No one missed me.

In three years time, you're standing at the crossroads when you see her. She's got a brown leather bag hanging off one shoulder, and a pearly white ribbon around her neck. Her head bobs along to a song you can't hear and you find yourself wondering what she sings in the shower these days – what she listens to before falling asleep. She used to joke that singing wasn't her forte, and that music wasn't her strength ; but you loved her Sunday morning humming ; her smile in your mouth, your fingers in her dress. She opens her eyes a little wider and then smiles and gives you a wave. There isn't much time for talking as you walk past each other and the green man begins to flash. You think her hair looks different, not the colour or the style, but the way it frames her face. She doesn't look so girlish when she says 'hey' and offers you a grin. And when she walks past, you can't help but turn and watch. You wonder who listens to her talk about the stars at night, or who carries her home when she's drunk. Three years ago she told you that she loved you. Today you almost say it back.

The instruments that I liked the most were the flautos and recorders, especially the lovely flauto in the box with blue velvet. It was so beautiful I had been shy about even touching it, but one day I worked up my courage and took it out of the cabinet. I placed the mouthpiece to my lips and blew. A loud ringing note came out, startling me so that I almost dropped the instrument. But I held on and tried again. As that second note died away, the white bear entered the room. I fought down the instinct to hide the flauto behind my back as though I were a naughty child caught playing with grown-up things. As he came closer I could read a sort of yearning in his eyes. He lay down on the rug near the cabinet and looked up expectantly, as he did in the weaving room when he was ready to hear a story. I shook my head. “I don’t know how to play,” I explained, my cheeks a little red. “Play,” he said. “I can’t.” But he just stared at me with those yearning eyes. So I tried. And though the tone of the instrument was lovely, my playing sounded like two birds of different pitch scolding each other. The white bear closed his eyes and flattened his ears against the sound. “Well, I warned you,” I said. Then he got up and crossed to a polished wooden chest, and, using a large paw, pushed the top up. I could see bundles of paper inside, some bound, some tied with ribbon. I knew what the papers were. “I cannot read music,” I said. The white bear sighed. Then he turned and left the room. After he’d gone I went to the chest and sat down beside it, taking out a bundle of the papers with music written on them. It became my new project, learning to read music. I was lucky to find a book in the chest that showed which note corresponded to which hole on the flauto. Occasionally the white bear would come into the music room and sit and listen while I practiced, which made me self-conscious. But he never stayed long. It was as if he could only take it so long, hearing the music he knew mangled beyond all recognizable shape.

Cholly floated about aimlessly, doing chores as he was told. All the glamour and warmth the adults had given him on the previous day were replaced by a sharpness that agreed with his mood. He could think only of the flashlight, the muscadines, and Darlene’s hands. And when he was not thinking of them, the vacancy in his head was like the space left by a newly pulled tooth still conscious of the rottenness that had once filled it. Afraid of running into Darlene, he would not go far from the house, but neither could he endure the atmosphere of his dead Aunt’s house. The picking through her things, the comments on the “condition” of her goods. Sullen, irritable, he cultivated his hatred of Darlene. Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him. They were big, white, armed men. He was small, black, helpless. His subconscious knew what his conscious mind did not guess—that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a question mark of smoke. He was, in time, to discover that hatred of white men—but not now. Not in impotence but later, when the hatred could find sweet expression. For now, he hated the one who had created the situation, the one who bore witness to his failure, his impotence. The one whom he had not been able to protect, to spare, to cover from the round moon glow of the flashlight. The hee-hee-hee’s. He recalled Darlene’s dripping hair ribbon, flapping against her face as they walked back in silence in the rain. The loathing that galloped through him made him tremble. There was no one to talk to.

As we were to be here over Sunday, and Monterey was the best place to go ashore on the whole coast, and we had had no liberty-day for nearly three months, every one was for going ashore. On Sunday morning, as soon as the decks were washed, and we had got breakfast, those who had obtained liberty began to clean themselves, as it is called, to go ashore. A bucket of fresh water apiece, a cake of soap, a large coarse towel, and we went to work scrubbing one another, on the forecastle. Having gone through this, the next thing was to get into the head,—one on each side—with a bucket apiece, and duck one another, by drawing up water and heaving over each other, while we were stripped to a pair of trowsers. Then came the rigging-up. The usual outfit of pumps, white stockings, loose white duck trowsers, blue jackets, clean checked shirts, black kerchiefs, hats well varnished, with a fathom of black ribbon over the left eye, a silk handkerchief flying from the outside jacket pocket, and four or five dollars tied up in the back of the neckerchief, and we were “all right.” One of the quarter-boats pulled us ashore, and we steamed up to the town. I

Indeed, it was perhaps the most iconic scene from any novel of its day, immortalised in engravings and artworks from the period and later. Werther, as Geothe’s narrator, describes the moment of desire in the first person: "I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affec-tionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away." The focus here is not on Lotte herself, of whom we learn only that she is ‘a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white’. Instead, for Werther what is important is what Barthes would call ‘the arrangements of objects’: Lotte’s relation to the children, the rye loaf, and the knife, all appear as scene-setting props which make desire possible. Lotte emerges from amidst these objects and Werther is ‘initiated’ as ‘the scene’ (described by Werther as the ‘most charming spectacle’) ‘consecrates the object [he is] going to love.’ It is that scene, that arrangement of objects, which makes desire – even love – possible. The technologies of our space, place and time set the scene for love to appear – make the emergence of desire possible. We don’t fall in love with an object in isolation but with how it appears in a curate scene determined by a variety of technologies. The Tinder profile card could hardly be a more perfect example from today.

Tom let his eyes drift to the gallery, which was again filled to capacity. He noticed that for the third straight day, Jasmine Haynes had attached an orange corsage to her dress just above her heart. Curious, Tom had asked Jazz about the garnish this morning. “When the Klan marched in 1989 with the Aryan Nation, the people here protested by putting orange wreaths and ribbons on all the business doors,” she had explained. “Orange is the international color of brotherhood. Bo and I were part of that protest, and I guess I’m . . . trying to send a message.

True to its name (gelato spelled backwards), Oletag is swimming against the tide of cost-cutting convenience that dominates Italy's ice cream industry. Sixty flavors at a given time, rotating daily- most rigorously tied to the season, many inspired by a pantry of savory ingredients: mustard, Gorgonzola with white chocolate and hazelnuts, pecorino with bitter orange. He seeks out local flavors, but never at the expense of a better product: pistachios from Turkey, hazelnuts from Piedmont, and (gasp!) French-born Valrhona chocolate. Extractions, infusions, experiments- whatever it takes to get more out of the handful of ingredients he puts into each creation. In the end, what matters is what ends up in the scoop, and the stuff at Oletag will make your toes curl- creams and chocolates so pure and intense they must be genetically manipulated, fruit-based creations so expressive of the season that they actually taste different from one day to the next. And a licorice gelato that will change you- if not for life, at least for a few weeks. Radicioni and Torcè are far from alone in their quest to lift the gelato genre. Fior di Luna has been doing it right- serious ingredients ethically sourced and minimally processed- since 1993. At Gelateria dei Gracchi, just across the Regina Margherita bridge, Alberto Monassei obsesses over every last detail, from the size of the whole hazelnuts in his decadent gianduia to the provenance of the pears that he combines with ribbons of caramel. And Maria Agnese Spagnuolo, one of Torcè's many disciples, continues to push the limits of gelato at her ever-expanding Fatamorgana empire, where a lineup of more than fifty choices- from basil-honey-walnut to dark chocolate-wasabi- attracts a steady crush of locals and savvy tourists.

His long black tresses, pulled back and tied neatly in the style of the day with a matching silk ribbon, were marked by a distinctive natural white shock running from crown to ends.

Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her environment. She wore a purple calico dress, rather short and scant; a gingham apron, with a capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting: or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing a lock of gray hair; her cap was of black lace and lutestring ribbon, not one of the butterfly affairs that perch on the top of the puffs and frizzes of the modern old lady, but a substantial structure that covered her whole head and was tied securely under her chin. She talked in a sweet old treble with a little lisp, caused by the absence of teeth, and her laugh was as clear and joyous as a young girl's. "Yes, I'm a-piecin' quilts again," she said, snipping away at the bits of calico in her lap. "I did say I was done with that sort o' work; but this mornin' I was rummagin' around up in the garret, and I come across this bundle of pieces, and thinks I, 'I reckon it's intended for me to piece one more quilt before I die;' I must 'a' put 'em there thirty years ago and clean forgot 'em, and I've been settin' here all the evenin' cuttin' 'em and thinkin' about old times. "Jest feel o' that," she continued, tossing some scraps into my lap. "There ain't any such caliker nowadays. This ain't your five-cent stuff that fades in the first washin' and wears out in the second. A caliker dress was somethin' worth buyin' and worth makin' up in them days. That blue-flowered piece was a dress I got the spring before Abram died. When I put on mournin' it was as good as new, and I give it to sister Mary. That one with the green ground and white figger was my niece Rebecca's. She wore it for the first time to the County Fair the year I took the premium on my salt-risin' bread and sponge cake. This black-an' white piece Sally Ann Flint give me. I ricollect 'twas in blackberry time, and I'd been out in the big pasture pickin' some for supper, and I stopped in at Sally Ann's for a drink o' water on my way back. She was cuttin' out this dress.