Wilson House Quotes

A messy house is a must - it separates your true friends from other friends. Real friends are there to visit you not your house!

Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.

When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave room for me.

Imagine a poem written with such enormous three-dimensional words that we had to invent a smaller word to reference each of the big ones; that we had to rewrite the whole thing in shorthand, smashing it into two dimensions, just to talk about it. Or don’t imagine it. Look outside. Human language is our attempt at navigating God’s language; it is us running between the lines of His epic, climbing on the vowels and building houses out of the consonants.

Kansas is not easily impressed. It has seen houses fly and cattle soar. When funnel clouds walk through the wheat, big hail falls behind. As the biggest stones melt, turtles and mice and fish and even men can be seen frozen inside. And Kansas is not surprised. Henry York had seen things in Kansas, things he didn't think belonged in this world. Things that didn't. Kansas hadn't flinched.

I wish in the city of your heart you would let me be the street where you walk when you are most yourself. I imagine the houses: It has been raining, but the rain is done and the children kept home have begun opening their doors.

When in the house of the enemy, the best rooms are always the ones with the lights out.

THE DAY HUNTING SEASON OPENED, I WAS AS NERVOUS AS Samie, our house cat.

Like you? I go out of here every morning… bust my butt…putting up with them crackers everyday…cause I like you? You about the biggest fool I ever saw. It’s my JOB. It’s my RESPONSIBILITY! You understand that? A man got to take care of his family. You live in my house… sleep on my bed clothes…fill you belly up with my food… cause you my son. You my flesh and blood. Not ‘cause I like you! Cause it’s my duty to take care of you. I OWE a responsibility to you! Let’s get this straight right here… before it go along any further… I ain’t got to like you. Mr. Rand don’t five me money come payday cause he likes me. He gives me cause he OWE me. I done give you everything I had to give you. I gave you your life! Me and your mama worked that out between us. And liking your black ass wasn’t part of the bargain. Don’t try and go through life worrying about if somebody like you or not. You best be making sure they doing right by you. You understand what I’m saying, boy?” - August Wilson, Fences, 1986.

Hope is a torturous thing. It wrenches one from despair just long enough to allow one to take a breath before plunging her back beneath the icy waters. If it wasn't for those breaths, it would be easy to let ice claim the soul. Easy to let surrender swallow the struggle. But hope - cruel mistress that she is - is not satisfied with so neat an ending. Like a house cat with a tiny prisoner, she wants only to torment the soul again, and again, until it dies from a burst heart.

Money is a way of measuring wealth but is not wealth in itself. A chest of gold coins or a fat wallet of bills is of no use whatsoever to a wrecked sailor alone on a raft. He needs real wealth, in the form of a fishing rod, a compass, an outboard motor with gas, and a female companion. But this ingrained and archaic confusion of money with wealth is now the main reason we are not going ahead full tilt with the development of our technological genius for the production of more than adequate food, clothing, housing, and utilities for every person on earth.

CORY: You ain't never gave me nothing! You ain't never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you. All you ever did was try and make me scared of you. I used to tremble every time you called my name. Every time I heard your footsteps in the house. Wondering all the time...what's Papa gonna say if I do this?...What's he gonna say if I do that?...What's Papa gonna say if I turn on the radio? And Mama, too...she tries...but she's scared of you.

CORY: The whole time I was growing up...living in his house...Papa was like a shadow that followed you everywhere. It weighed on you and sunk into your flesh. It would wrap around you and lay there until you couldn't tell which one was you anymore. That shadow digging in your flesh. Trying to crawl in. Trying to live through you. Everywhere I looked, Troy Maxson was staring back at me...hiding under the bed...in the closet. I'm just saying I've got to find a way to get rid of that shadow, Mama.

When women devote themselves to their husbands, children, and building their house, the whole church is strengthened. This is actually their 'ministry' to the church: being obedient wives who are raising godly children. Obviously, when a church is full of healthy families, the church will be healthy and stable.

The air was fresh and crisp and had a distinct smell which was a mixture of the dried leaves on the ground and the smoke from the chimneys and the sweet ripe apples that were still clinging onto the branches in the orchard behind the house.

ROSE: I married your daddy and settled down to cooking his super and keeping clean sheets on the bed. When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave some room for me. For my part in the matter. But at that time I wanted that. I wanted a house that I could sing in. And that's what your daddy gave me. I didn't know to keep up his strength I had to give up little pieces of mine. I did that. I took on his life as mine and mixed up the pieces so that you couldn't hardly tell which was which anymore. It was my choice. It was my life and I didn't have to live it like that.But that's what life offered me in the way of being a woman and I took it. I grabbed hold of it with both hands.

We have no need to learn to think much of ourselves, to care for ourselves, to consider our own needs, wants, and desires. We already do that far too much. The problem is getting us to think of others, to have a lowliness of mind that springs from humility and love.

What Edith did not yet appreciate was that Wilson was now a man in love, and as White House usher Ike Hoover observed, Wilson was “no mean man in love-making when once the germ has found its resting place.

Every year, Kansas watches the world die. Civilizations of wheat grow tall and green; they grow old and golden, and then men shaped from the same earth as the crop cut those lives down. And when the grain is threshed, and the dances and festivals have come and gone, then the fields are given over to fire, and the wheat stubble ascends into the Kansas sky, and the moon swells to bursting above a blackened earth. The fields around Henry, Kansas, had given up their gold and were charred. Some had already been tilled under, waiting for the promised life of new seed. Waiting for winter, and for spring, and another black death. The harvest had been good. Men, women, boys and girls had found work, and Henry Days had been all hot dogs and laughter, even without Frank Willis's old brown truck in the parade. The truck was over on the edge of town, by a lonely barn decorated with new No Trespassing signs and a hole in the ground where the Willis house had been in the spring and the early summer. Late summer had now faded into fall, and the pale blue farm house was gone. Kansas would never forget it.

Inspiration was a temperamental guest. It dropped in unannounced, then left without so much as a goodbye, slipping out a window in the dead of night or sauntering out the front door, leaving the house empty, drafty, and cold.

We’re staying?” Bessie said, and it sounded like she really wanted the answer to be yes. “Yeah,” I told her. “And you’re staying with us, right?” she said. “I am. I will,” I said. “So . . . we’re home?” Roland said, so fucking confused. Both children looked at me, their huge eyes fixed on me. “We’re home,” I said. I knew it wasn’t my home. And it wasn’t their home. But we would steal it. We had a whole summer to take this house and make it ours. And who could stop us? Jesus, we had fire.

I was pacing through the house, brushing my hair, rubbing moisturizer on my face, clipping my toenails, all these little things to make myself presentable, and, each time, I’d look at myself again in the mirror and feel like not a single thing had changed.

This was how you did it, how you raised children. You built them a house that was impervious to danger and then you gave them every single thing that they could ever want, no matter how impossible. You read to them at night. Why couldn’t people figure this out?

why do other ‘snobs’ – and indeed everyone who dreams of a big house and an exciting social life – not turn to serial murder, too?

Woodrow Wilson intimate Edward House urged that his boss never first be approached by argument. Instead, the President could be made most receptive by laying a groundwork of 'common hatred".

In the average home there is much work to be done, and God does not approve of laziness. But beware thinking that your schedule (whether it is a homeschooling schedule or feeding-the-baby schedule) is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Life in our homes should be characterized by joy and thanksgiving so that children are taught and nourished in a way that takes their souls into account.

Marcia Wilson was a good example of Omega’s core strategy for creating a New World Order. It involved placing their people, or moles, in positions of power within the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, the White House and global organizations like the UN, the IMF and the World Bank. This enabled Omega to pull some of the strings of these organizations and to direct American, and world politics, to an extent.

You right! You one hundred percent right! I done spent the last seventeen years worrying about what you got. Now it’s your turn, see? I’ll tell you what to do. You grown . . . we don established that. You a man. Now, let’s see you act like one. Turn your behind around and walk out this yard. And when you get out there in the alley . . . you can forget about this house. See? Cause this is my house. You go on and be a man and get your own house. You can forget about this. You can forget about this. ‘Cause this is mine. You go on and get yours because I’m through with doing for you.

the genes of modern-day Africans are a treasure house for all humanity. They possess our species’ greatest reservoir of genetic diversity, of which further study will shed new light on the heredity of the human body and mind. Perhaps the time has come, in light of this and other advances in human genetics, to adopt a new ethic of racial and hereditary variation, one that places value on the whole of diversity rather than on the differences composing the diversity. It would give proper measure to our species’ genetic variation as an asset, prized for the adaptability it provides all of us during an increasingly uncertain future. Humanity is strengthened by a broad portfolio of genes that can generate new talents, additional resistance to diseases, and perhaps even new ways of seeing reality. For scientific as well as for moral reasons, we should learn to promote human biological diversity for its own sake instead of using it to justify prejudice and conflict.

There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water. It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.

Keep telling yourself that.” “I’ve never seen anything like this in the house.” Derek Wilson, a local businessman he recognized from his TV commercials, spoke up. “She have one of those e-reader things?” “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I think so.” “It’s full of romance novels. Trust us.

As Wilson mourned his wife, German forces in Belgium entered quiet towns and villages, took civilian hostages, and executed them to discourage resistances. In the town of Dinant, German soldiers shot 612 men, women, and children. The American press called such atrocities acts of "frightfulness," the word then used to describe what later generations would call terrorism. On August 25, German forces bean an assault on the Belgian city of Louvain, the "Oxford of Belgium," a university town that was home to an important library. Three days of shelling and murder left 209 civilians dead, 1,100 buildings incinerated, and the library destroyed, along with its 230,000 books, priceless manuscripts, and artifacts. The assault was deemed an affront to just to Belgium but to the world. Wilson, a past president of Princeton University, "felt deeply the destruction of Louvain," according to his friend, Colonel House; the president feared "the war would throw the world back three or four centuries.

Dinner?” Jasper then said, not to anyone in particular, like a magic spell. I knew that when we walked into the dining room, there would be food that had not been there before Jasper said that single word. “Yes!” Madison said. “Are you hungry?” “I am,” he said, still not smiling. Maybe he was thinking about his fire children. Maybe he was thinking about me, this strange woman, taking up space in his house. Or maybe he was just thinking about the steps necessary for him to become the president. The point was, I didn’t know what he was thinking, and that made me nervous.

(Aiden) “Sam, honey, I can smell your scent when you’re at the other end of your house, on a different floor. I can feel your heartbeat in my head. Your blood … it’s in me, Sam, enriched from the meals I cook for you with my own hands. Believe me, baby, I’ll know you’re there. And I will never hurt you.

A peal of mirth almost escaped me at the notion of shaming the blood-soaked House of Atreus, as if it had even been clean.

So it is the custom that a free woman leave her mother’s house to bind herself and those of her blood to a neighboring clan, either by the sword or by the cradle.

Round My House: Notes of Rural Life in France in Peace and War, by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Wilson

One of the votes against war came from the very first woman ever to sit in the House of Representatives, Jeannette Rankin

A hot dry day was perfect for cutting hay, but Sunday in those days was a true day of rest, and no hay would be taken from the fields, nor any labour done inside or outside of the house.

They want to keep the government ‘out of our bedrooms.’ What are they talking about? I have to live in their society, remember. And I built my house, which means I built my own bedroom. The government told me how far apart the studs had to be in my bedroom wall, they dictated how thick the sheetrock had to be, they mandated how far apart the sheetrock screws had to be, they had policies on the configuration of those sheetrock screws, they have laws on the size of the windows and what kind of glass I can have in them, and there are stern legal warnings on the mattress tags. What do you mean, you want to keep the government out of our bedrooms? The president is probably contemplating, right this minute, the establishment of a bedroom czar.

If her walls could talk they might recount the stories of generations of families, of two World Wars, of prayers she has heard, of joys she has shared, and somber times of sorrow, grief, and loss.

Next time you leave the house, think about who might be watching you. Do you pass a traffic camera? Do the shops you go to have security cameras? Is there a camera on board your train or bus? What about in your school? The cafes and restaurants where you eat? Street corners? Subways? And who is on the other side of that camera? A private security guard? The police? The government? How can you tell?

The whole time I was growing up...living in this house...Papa was like a shadow that followed you everywhere. ...It would wrap around you and lay there until you couldn't tell which one was you anymore.

The plants and animals all around us were waking from a long sleep, and our yard was slowly transformed into a carpet of soft green, and the skies above our house were filled with choruses of birdsong once again.

so far remained unbroken. Now my turn had come. In early springtime, when I was just sixteen, my mother took me to the house where she had won her shield so many years before. The Lady Abicel, long dead, had left her house and lands, along with her

Outside the White House, Wilson’s many notes to Germany and their replies became the target of wry humor, as when one editor wrote: “Dear Kaiser: In spite of previous correspondence on the subject another ship with American citizens on board has been sunk. Under the circumstances we feel constrained to inform you, in a spirit of utmost friendliness, that a repetition of the incident will of necessity require the dispatch of another note to your majesty’s most estimable and peace-loving government.” As

Audiences cheered Trump’s “honest” talk about “shithole countries,” “pig’s blood,” and “banging heads.” Not since George Wallace had a presidential candidate spoken this way. Not since Woodrow Wilson had such an outspoken racist occupied the White House.

Instead of getting the house like Mount Vernon, they had moved into the little house on Greentree Avenue in Westport, and Betsy had become pregnant, and he had thrown the vase against the wall, and the washing machine had broken down. And Grandmother had died and left her house to somebody, and instead of being made vice-president of J. H. Nottersby, Incorporated, he had finally arrived at a job where he tested mattresses, was uneasy when his boss said he wanted to see him without explaining why, and lived in fear of an elevator operator.

As the motion picture finished—the first ever to be screened at the White House—President Wilson declared it a triumph. D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation was “like writing history with lightning,” the president gushed. “And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

Bannon’s tenure in the Trump White House went about as well as expected; he’s a sloppy thinker, largely disorganized, and given to impulses that run him into political and ideological box canyons. He’s also a man who loves to have enemies. He needs enemies—real and imagined—to function.

If I could only remember that the days were not bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety and peace, but only food for the fires of the heart, the fires which keep the poet alive as the citizen never lives, but which burn all the roofs of security!

August 25, German forces began an assault on the Belgian city of Louvain, the “Oxford of Belgium,” a university town that was home to an important library. Three days of shelling and murder left 209 civilians dead, 1,100 buildings incinerated, and the library destroyed, along with its 230,000 books, priceless manuscripts, and artifacts. The assault was deemed an affront not just to Belgium but to the world. Wilson, a past president of Princeton University, “felt deeply the destruction of Louvain,” according to his friend Colonel House; the president feared “the war would throw the world back three or four centuries.

Wilson, my fluffy gray, had two kitty paws out of the box, two kitty paws in it and he was looking around, getting his new bearings and probably wishing he had opposable thumbs so he could hack me up, such was his current shitty life finding himself in four different houses in four different days, only one of them home.

Trump revealed his powerful secret to conquering financial adversity once, in a meeting to promote another one of his signature, view-eating housing developments: “You know,” he said, “what New York really needs—besides this project—is to reduce its debt. And let me tell you—this is something I know—it’s easy! You just don’t pay!” America

As children', wrote Alice Raikes (Mrs. Wilson Fox) in The Times, January 22, 1932, 'we lived in Onslow Square and used to play in the garden behind the houses. Charles Dodgson used to stay with an old uncle there, and walk up and down, his hands behind him, on the strip of lawn. One day, hearing my name, he called me to him saying, "So you are another Alice. I'm very found of Alices. Would you like to come and see something which is rather puzzling?" We followed him into his house which opened, as ours did, upon the garden, into a room full of furniture with a tall mirror standing across one corner.' "Now", he said giving me an orange, "first tell me which hand you have got that in." "The right" I said. "Now", he said, "go and stand before that glass, and tell me which hand the little girl you see there has got it in." After some perplexed contemplation, I said, "The left hand." "Exactly," he said, "and how do you explain that?" I couldn't explain it, but seeing that some solution was expected, I ventured, "If I was on the other side of the glass, wouldn't the orange still be in my right hand?" I can remember his laugh. "Well done, little Alice," he said. "The best answer I've heard yet." "I heard no more then, but in after years was told that he said that had given him his first idea for Through the Looking-Glass, a copy of which, together with each of his other books, he regularly sent me.

My earliest recollections of a school-life, are connected with a large, rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded and asleep.

It seemed as if nothing were to break that tie — as if the years were merely to compact and cement it; and as if those years were to be all the years of their natural lives. Eighteen-forty-two turned into eighteen-forty-three; eighteen-forty-three into eighteen- forty-four; eighteen-forty-four into eighteen-forty-five. Flush was no longer a puppy; he was a dog of four or five; he was a dog in the full prime of life — and still Miss Barrett lay on her sofa in Wimpole Street and still Flush lay on the sofa at her feet. Miss Barrett’s life was the life of “a bird in its cage.” She sometimes kept the house for weeks at a time, and when she left it, it was only for an hour or two, to drive to a shop in a carriage, or to be wheeled to Regent’s Park in a bath-chair. The Barretts never left London. Mr. Barrett, the seven brothers, the two sisters, the butler, Wilson and the maids, Catiline, Folly, Miss Barrett and Flush all went on living at 50 Wimpole Street, eating in the dining-room, sleeping in the bedrooms, smoking in the study, cooking in the kitchen, carrying hot-water cans and emptying the slops from January to December. The chair-covers became slightly soiled; the carpets slightly worn; coal dust, mud, soot, fog, vapours of cigar smoke and wine and meat accumulated in crevices, in cracks, in fabrics, on the tops of picture-frames, in the scrolls of carvings. And the ivy that hung over Miss Barrett’s bedroom window flourished; its green curtain became thicker and thicker, and in summer the nasturtiums and the scarlet runners rioted together in the window-box. But one night early in January 1845 the postman knocked. Letters fell into the box as usual. Wilson went downstairs to fetch the letters as usual. Everything was as usual — every night the postman knocked, every night Wilson fetched the letters, every night there was a letter for Miss Barrett. But tonight the letter was not the same letter; it was a different letter. Flush saw that, even before the envelope was broken. He knew it from the way that Miss Barrett took it; turned it; looked at the vigorous, jagged writing of her name.

To understand hardware and software (as applied to the human brain) perform the following meditation. Sit in a room where you will not be disturbed for a half hour and begin thinking, “I am sitting in this room doing this exercize because . . .“ and list as many of the “causes” as you can think of. For instance, you are doing this exercize because, obviously, you read about it in this book. Why did you buy this book? Did somebody recommend it? How did that person come into your life? If you just picked the book up in a store, why did you happen to be in just that store on just that day? Why do you read books of this sort — on psychology, consciousness, evolution etc.? How did you get interested in those fields? Who turned you on, and how long ago? What factors in your childhood inclined you to be interested in these subjects later? Why are you doing this exercize in this room and not elsewhere? Why did you buy or rent this house or apartment? Why are you in this city and not another? Why on this continent and not another? Why are you here at all — that is, how did your parents meet? Did they consciously decide to have a child, do you happen to know, or were you an accident? What cities were they born in? If in different cities, why did they move in space-time so that their paths would intersect? Why is this planet capable of supporting life, and why did it produce the kind of life that would dream up an exercize of this sort? Repeat this exercize a few days later, trying to ask and answer fifty questions you didn’t think of the first time. (Note that you cannot ever ask all possible questions.) Avoid all metaphysical speculations (e.g., karma, reincarnation, “destiny” etc.). The point of the exercize will be mind-blowing enough without introducing “occult” theories, and it will be more startling if you carefully avoid such overtly “mystical” speculations.

the Lusitania was deliberately sent to her doom. Prior to the incident, Winston Churchill, then head of the British Admiralty, had ordered a study done to determine the political impact if the Germans sank a British passenger ship with Americans on board. And just before the sinking, Edward Grey, the British foreign minister, asked Edward Mandell House, top advisor to President Woodrow Wilson: “What will America do if the Germans sink an ocean liner with American passengers on board?

Writing here this cloudy morning, with a great confused roaring of breakers in my ears, I call to mind the Wilson’s warbler, the female, I saw a fortnight ago, and I wonder where it was that she forsook her familiar earth for the grey ocean, an ocean she perhaps had never seen. What a gesture of ancient faith and present courage such a flight is, what a defiance of circumstance and death—land wing and hostile sea, the fading land behind, the unknown and the distant articulate and imperious in the bright, aërial blood.

What Satan offered Christ in the temptation in the wilderness, Christ refused. But Christ did not refuse the offer because He didn’t want what was offered. He didn’t want it on those terms, but the reason He had come down to earth was to obtain those very kingdoms. He refused the tempter’s offer because He was planning to knock him down and take the kingdoms of men from him. “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house” (Mk. 3:27).

If a woman is flourishing in her home and glorifying God while rejoicing in her domestic duties, and doing them well, but still finding extra hours in her day, she is in a position to look for more to do. She has something to export. This might be volunteer work for the community or church, it may be part-time employment, or it might be learning new skills at home. The possibilities are endless when we really think about it. A new wife may be able to ease gradually into assuming more responsibilities outside the home as she becomes more and more proficient at the job God has given her, but it is unwise to do this too quickly. Sometimes a woman can kid herself into thinking she has extra time, when in fact she is actually just barely getting by with the minimum in her basic domestic duties. For example, if she simply rotates three dinners over and over because that’s all she knows how to make, her problem is not that she has too much time on her hands. She needs help and input and encouragement, not outside activities to give her more to do. She has to determine to become skilled at the tasks God has assigned for her.

In the history of American politics, no campaign and no administration can rival the sideshow cast of characters who compose Trump World. Instead of smart, dignified men and women striving to serve the nation in the People’s House, they more closely resemble a casting call for the set of Real Housewives of Vulgaria. Team Trump is the dross in the American political melting pot, combining raging crony capitalism, conflicts of interest, ideological dead ends, industrial-scale ass-kissing, and the worst instincts and beliefs scraped from the darkest corners of our national shame closet.

My body was quiet after the orgy. I felt power; I felt I was taking revenge. I was inflicting pain, being unfaithful, desecrating all the delicacies in Bill and in myself. Wilson, who has big needs, needed me, wanted all I could give, wanted me for a wife, a collaborator, a mistress, one to enjoy power with, his two houses, his position of power, his last ten years of achievement, but I starve him, elude him. He telephones. I inflict the suffering on him that was inflicted on me by another, but only because I do not love. So it must mean that those who behaved as I do now do not love.

Because here's a thing I've come to understand of late: context really does affect flavor. A place, its atmosphere, the people within it, their mood (and ours) genuinely change the way things taste. A restaurant lasagna has to be twice as good as your mother's or that one you had on that trip to Italy -- for it to be remind you of it even a little. A rack fo smoked pork ribs will never taste as good on a ceramic plate atop a tablecloth as it does from within a Styrofoam box on the hood of your car, downwind a roadside smoker, I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.

THE NEW DEAL didn’t transform the Constitution only by institutionalizing nine unelected judges with lifetime tenure as a permanent constitutional convention, turning Woodrow Wilson’s theory into hard reality. It also allowed Congress to create, at the president’s request and with the blessing of the Court, an unprecedented regulatory state, made up of a constellation of administrative agencies—from the Federal Housing Administration and the Federal Communications Commission to the National Labor Relations Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission—that make rules, enforce them, and adjudicate transgressions of them.

Married to a naval commander who happened to be Benjamin Franklin’s great-great-grandson, Wainwright prayed to the graven image of Lafayette, since neither the president nor Congress seemed to be listening. “We, the women of the United States,” she told the bronze Lafayette, “denied the liberty which you helped to gain, and for which we have asked in vain for sixty years, turn to you to plead for us. Speak, Lafayette, dead these hundred years but still living in the hearts of the American people.” She beseeched the inanimate Frenchman, “Let that outstretched hand of yours pointing to the White House recall to him”—President Wilson—“his words and promises, his trumpet call for all of us, to see that the world is made safe for democracy. As our army now in France spoke to you there, saying here we are to help your country fight for liberty, will you not speak here and now for us, a little band with no army, no power but justice and right, no strength but in our Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence; and win a great victory again in this country by giving us the opportunity we ask—to be heard through the Susan B. Anthony amendment.” She then echoed the words uttered by the American officer in Paris on July 4, 1917. “Lafayette,” she said, “we are here!

If I could only keep up my spirit- if I could only play the game according to the sportsman's code which Rita had been trying to teach me so gravely and so sweetly- if I could only, I told myself, do that, then in the long run, all might be right between us- because I had not nagged her or wearied her, because I had proved myself her peer, as prompt to offer all for love and as brave to bear its passing. If I could only remember that the days were not bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety and peace, but only food for the fires of the heart, the fires which keep the poet alive as the citizen never lives, but which burn all the roofs of security!

Okay,” I said. “Okay, I’ll watch these kids. I’ll be their . . . what did you call it?” “Governess,” she said, delighted. “Yeah, I’ll be that.” “I promise you that I will never forget this. Never.” “I’d better get home,” I said. “Is Carl gone? Can somebody drive me to the bus station?” “No,” Madison said, shaking her head, standing up. “You aren’t going home tonight. You’re staying here. You’ll spend the night. In fact, you don’t have to go home if you don’t want to. We’re buying you everything you need. All new clothes! The best computer. Whatever you want.” “Okay,” I said, so tired all of a sudden. “What do you want for dinner tonight? Our cook can make anything.” “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe pizza or something like that.” “We have a pizza oven!” she said. “The best pizza you’ve ever had.” We stared at each other. It was three in the afternoon. What did we do until dinner? “Is Timothy still napping?” I asked, trying to break the awkwardness. “Oh, yeah, I’d better go check on him. Do you want a drink or anything?” “Maybe I can take a nap?” I asked. I barely took note of how huge the house was now that I was able to move through it. We went up a spiral staircase, like in some big-budget musical. Madison was telling me some nonsense about how during the Civil War they took horses up these stairs and hid them in the attic from the Union army. It’s possible I imagined this, some kind of fever dream in the aftermath of making a life-altering decision.

and drew her strength directly from our magickal Oklahoma earth. “U-we-tsi-a-ge-ya, it seems I need help at the lavender booth. I simply cannot believe how busy we are.” Grandma had barely spoken when a nun hurried up. “Zoey, Sister Mary Angela could use your help filling out cat adoption forms.” “I’ll help you, Grandma Redbird,” Shaylin said. “I love the smell of lavender.” “Oh, honey, that would be so sweet of you. First, could you run to my car and get into the trunk. There is another box of lavender soaps and sachets tucked back there. Looks like I’m going to sell out completely,” Grandma said happily. “Sure thing.” Shaylin caught the keys Grandma tossed to her and hurried toward the main exit of the school grounds which led to the parking lot, as well as the tree-lined road that joined Utica Street. “And I’ll call my momma. She said just let her know if we get too busy over here. She and the PTA moms will be back here in a sec,” said Stevie Rae. “Grandma, do you mind if I give Street Cats a hand? I’ve been dying to check out their new litter of kittens.” “Go on, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya. I think Sister Mary Angela has been missing your company.” “Thanks, Grandma.” I smiled at her. Then I turned to Stevie Rae. “Okay, if your mom’s group is coming back, I’m gonna go help the nuns.” “Yeah, no problem.” Stevie Rae, shielding her eyes and peering through the crowd, added, “I see her now, and she’s got Mrs. Rowland and Mrs. Wilson with her.” “Don’t worry. We can handle this,” Shaunee said. “’Kay,” I said, grinning at both of them. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I left the cookie booth and noticed Aphrodite, clutching her big purple Queenies cup, was right on my heels. “I thought you didn’t want a lecture from the nuns.” “Better than a lecture from PTA moms.” She shuddered. “Plus, I like cats more than people.” I shrugged. “Okay, whatever.” We’d only gotten partway to the Street Cats tent when Aphrodite slowed way down. “Seriously. Effing. Pathetic.” She was muttering around her straw, narrowing her eyes, and glaring. I followed her gaze and joined her frown. “Yeah, no matter how many times I see them together, I still don’t get it.” Aphrodite and I had stopped to watch Shaunee’s ex-Twin BFF, Erin, hang all over Dallas. “I really thought she was better than that.” “Apparently not,” Aphrodite said. “Eeew,” I said, looking away from their way too public display of locked lips. “I’m telling you, there’s not enough booze in Tulsa to make watching those two suck face okay.” She made a gagging sound, which changed to a snort and a laugh. “Check out the wimple, twelve o’clock.” Sure enough, there was a nun I vaguely recognized as Sister Emily (one of the more uptight of the nuns) descending on the too-busy-with-their-tongues-to-notice couple. “She looks serious,” I said. “You know, a nun may very well be the direct opposite of an aphrodisiac. This should be entertaining. Let’s watch.” “Zoey! Over here!” I looked from the train wreck about to happen to see Sister Mary Angela waving me over to her.

Trump’s short temper, lack of knowledge or experience in national security matters, and inability to see beyond the time horizon of his next tweet will, in the event of a more kinetic crisis, leave American forces and interests at risk. God forbid an American warship fails in battle, or a Special Forces unit can’t complete a mission. He’ll likely declare them enemies of the people and issue a tweet to mock their shortcomings. The bad guys know the same things our allies know: This is a weak man in a weak White House. He is unreliable, untruthful, and unmanageable. No matter how many flyovers and tank displays are arranged to keep him clapping like a toddler, and no matter how tough he talks on Twitter, they’ve got his number…and America in their sights.

Nick,' he corrected quietly. 'As to your emotions, they show in your face, in those amazing eyes. One day soon those eyes will change colour and glow for me.' 'They already have done,' Joanna snapped, rage surfacing. 'I never liked you, Mr Martella, and now I can only think I hate you. If I should ever know that you're coming here again I'll make quite sure I'm a long way off!' He took one menacing step towards her and Joanna backed away, her expression of loathing making his face harden frighteningly. 'I will not touch you,' he grated angrily. 'I will merely tell you this: J leave for America tomorrow. I shall be there for two months. When I return I intend to come for you.' The thought of people in the house left Joanna's head entirely. Her hands clenched at her sides and her considerable temper surfaced over grief, fear and utter bewilderment. 'If you were the last man in the universe I wouldn't consent to be near you!' she shouted. 'You've taken away everything I've ever wanted. You've even sneaked up and taken my father. Now I can never go to Santa Marta again!' 'I know you love the island,' he said with surprising quiet. 'Your father told me. We will live there and you will see your father whenever you care to walk down the beach to his house.' 'I'll see him when he comes over to England,' Joanna corrected bitterly. 'One thing is for sure, though: after today I'll never see you again! Forget the mad idea about me, Mr Martella, because I'd rather die!' 'You will not die, Joanna,' he said silkily, 'unless it is the small death that lovers die in each other's arms. And I intend to be your lover. In two months I will be back.

Rewriting the baseball record book must be very fulfilling. Or maybe not. Yankees outfielder Roger Maris knew firsthand the fickle nature of success. After an MVP season in 1960—when he hit 39 homers and drove in a league-high 112 runs—Maris began a historic assault on one of baseball’s most imposing records: Babe Ruth’s single-season home run mark of 60. In the thirty-three seasons since the Bambino had set the standard, only a handful of players had come close when Jimmie Foxx in 1932 and Hank Greenberg in 1938 each hit 58. Hack Wilson, in 1930, slammed 56. But in 1961, Maris—playing in “The House That Ruth Built”—launched 61 home runs to surpass baseball’s most legendary slugger. Surprisingly, the achievement angered fans who seemed to feel Maris lacked the appropriate credentials to unseat Ruth. Some record books reminded readers that the native Minnesotan had accomplished his feat in a season eight games longer than Ruth’s. Major League Baseball, due to expansion, changed the traditional 154-game season to 162 games with the 1961 season. Of the new home run record, Maris said, “All it ever brought me was trouble.” Human achievements can be that way. Apart from God, the things we most desire can become empty and unfulfilling—even frustrating—as the writer of Ecclesiastes noted. “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income,” he wrote (5:10). “Everyone’s toil is for their mouth,” he added, “yet their appetite is never satisfied” (6:7). But the Bible also shows where real satisfaction is found, in what Ecclesiastes calls “the conclusion of the matter.” Fulfillment comes to those who “fear God and keep his commandments” (12:13).

And, so, what was it that elevated Rubi from dictator's son-in-law to movie star's husband to the sort of man who might capture the hand of the world's wealthiest heiress? Well, there was his native charm. People who knew him, even if only casually, even if they were predisposed to be suspicious or resentful of him, came away liking him. He picked up checks; he had courtly manners; he kept the party gay and lively; he was attentive to women but made men feel at ease; he was smoothly quick to rise from his chair when introduced, to open doors, to light a lady's cigarette ("I have the fastest cigarette lighter in the house," he once boasted): the quintessential chivalrous gent of manners. The encomia, if bland, were universal. "He's a very nice guy," swore gossip columnist Earl Wilson, who stayed with Rubi in Paris. ""I'm fond of him," said John Perona, owner of New York's El Morocco. "Rubi's got a nice personality and is completely masculine," attested a New York clubgoer. "He has a lot of men friends, which, I suppose, is unusual. Aly Khan, for instance, has few male friends. But everyone I know thinks Rubi is a good guy." "He is one of the nicest guys I know," declared that famed chum of famed playboys Peter Lawford. "A really charming man- witty, fun to be with, and a he-man." There were a few tricks to his trade. A society photographer judged him with a professional eye thus: "He can meet you for a minute and a month later remember you very well." An author who played polo with him put it this way: "He had a trick that never failed. When he spoke with someone, whether man or woman, it seemed as if the rest of the world had lost all interest for him. He could hang on the words of a woman or man who spoke only banalities as if the very future of the world- and his future, especially- depended on those words." But there was something deeper to his charm, something irresistible in particular when he turned it on women. It didn't reveal itself in photos, and not every woman was susceptible to it, but it was palpable and, when it worked, unforgettable. Hollywood dirt doyenne Hedda Hoppe declared, "A friend says he has the most perfect manners she has ever encountered. He wraps his charm around your shoulders like a Russian sable coat." Gossip columnist Shelia Graham was chary when invited to bring her eleven-year-old daughter to a lunch with Rubi in London, and her wariness was transmitted to the girl, who wiped her hand off on her dress after Rubi kissed it in a formal greeting; by the end of lunch, he had won the child over with his enthusiastic, spontaneous manner, full of compliments but never cloying. "All done effortlessly," Graham marveled. "He was probably a charming baby, I am sure that women rushed to coo over him in the cradle." Elsa Maxwell, yet another gossip, but also a society gadabout and hostess who claimed a key role in at least one of Rubi's famous liaisons, put it thus: "You expect Rubi to be a very dangerous young man who personifies the wolf. Instead, you meet someone who is so unbelievably charming and thoughtful that you are put off-guard before you know it." But charm would only take a man so far. Rubi was becoming and international legend not because he could fascinate a young girl but because he could intoxicate sophisticated women. p124

Ever since she was a young girl, [Patricia Highsmith] had felt an extraordinary empathy for animals, particularly cats. The creatures, she said, 'provide something for writers that humans cannot: companionship that makes no demands or intrusions, that is as restful and ever-changing as a tranquil sea that barely moves'. Her affection for cats was 'a constant as was feline companionship wherever her domestic situation permitted,' says Kingsley. 'As for animals in general, she saw them as individual personalities often better behaved, and endowed with more dignity and honesty than humans. Cruelty to or neglect of any helpless living creature could turn her incandescent with rage.' Janice Robertson remembers how [...] Highsmith was walking through the streets of Soho when she saw a wounded pigeon lying in the gutter. 'Pat decided there and then that this pigeon should be rescued,' says Janice. 'Although I think Roland persuaded her that it was past saving, she really was distraught. She couldn't bear to see animals hurt.' Bruno Sager, Highsmith's carer at the end of her life, recalls the delicacy with which the writer would take hold of a spider which had crawled into the house, making sure to deposit it safely in her garden. 'For her human beings were strange - she thought she would never understand them - and perhaps that is why she liked cats and snails so much,' he says.

On Sunday, November 10, Kaiser Wilhelm II was dethroned, and he fled to Holland for his life. Britain’s King George V, who was his cousin, told his diary that Wilhelm was “the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into this ghastly war,” having “utterly ruined his country and himself.” Keeping vigil at the White House, the President and First Lady learned by telephone, at three o’clock that morning, that the Germans had signed an armistice. As Edith later recalled, “We stood mute—unable to grasp the significance of the words.” From Paris, Colonel House, who had bargained for the armistice as Wilson’s envoy, wired the President, “Autocracy is dead. Long live democracy and its immortal leader. In this great hour my heart goes out to you in pride, admiration and love.” At 1:00 p.m., wearing a cutaway and gray trousers, Wilson faced a Joint Session of Congress, where he read out Germany’s surrender terms. He told the members that “this tragical war, whose consuming flames swept from one nation to another until all the world was on fire, is at an end,” and “it was the privilege of our own people to enter it at its most critical juncture.” He added that the war’s object, “upon which all free men had set their hearts,” had been achieved “with a sweeping completeness which even now we do not realize,” and Germany’s “illicit ambitions engulfed in black disaster.” This time, Senator La Follette clapped. Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Lodge complained that Wilson should have held out for unconditional German surrender. Driven down Capitol Hill, Wilson was cheered by joyous crowds on the streets. Eleanor Roosevelt recorded that Washington “went completely mad” as “bells rang, whistles blew, and people went up and down the streets throwing confetti.” Including those who had perished in theaters of conflict from influenza and other diseases, the nation’s nineteen-month intervention in the world war had levied a military death toll of more than 116,000 Americans, out of a total perhaps exceeding 8 million. There were rumors that Wilson planned to sail for France and horse-trade at the peace conference himself. No previous President had left the Americas during his term of office. The Boston Herald called this tradition “unwritten law.” Senator Key Pittman, Democrat from Nevada, told reporters that Wilson should go to Paris “because there is no man who is qualified to represent him.” The Knickerbocker Press of Albany, New York, was disturbed by the “evident desire of the President’s adulators to make this war his personal property.” The Free Press of Burlington, Vermont, said that Wilson’s presence in Paris would “not be seemly,” especially if the talks degenerated into “bitter controversies.” The Chattanooga Times called on Wilson to stay home, “where he could keep his own hand on the pulse of his own people” and “translate their wishes” into action by wireless and cable to his bargainers in Paris.

In seeking to establish the causes of poverty and other social problems among black Americans, for example, sociologist William Julius Wilson pointed to factors such as “the enduring effects of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, public school segregation, legalized discrimination, residential segregation, the FHA’s redlining of black neighborhoods in the 1940s and ’50s, the construction of public housing projects in poor black neighborhoods, employer discrimination, and other racial acts and processes.”1 These various facts might be summarized as examples of racism, so the causal question is whether racism is either the cause, or one of the major causes, of poverty and other social problems among black Americans today. Many might consider the obvious answer to be “yes.” Yet some incontrovertible facts undermine that conclusion. For example, despite the high poverty rate among black Americans in general, the poverty rate among black married couples has been less than 10 percent every year since 1994.2 The poverty rate of married blacks is not only lower than that of blacks as a whole, but in some years has also been lower than that of whites as a whole.3 In 2016, for example, the poverty rate for blacks was 22 percent, for whites was 11 percent, and for black married couples was 7.5 percent.4 Do racists care whether someone black is married or unmarried? If not, then why do married blacks escape poverty so much more often than other blacks, if racism is the main reason for black poverty? If the continuing effects of past evils such as slavery play a major causal role today, were the ancestors of today’s black married couples exempt from slavery and other injustices? As far back as 1969, young black males whose homes included newspapers, magazines, and library cards, and who also had the same education as young white males, had similar incomes as their white counterparts.5 Do racists care whether blacks have reading material and library cards?

Please give me another chance!” Breathing hard, I waited for a light to come on, a door to open, a sign that she still loved me . . . but the house remained dark and silent. Crickets chirped. I glanced over at the girls, who seemed just as distraught as I was. They looked at each other, and then back at me. That’s when I heard a feminine voice come out of the darkness behind me. “Hey Winnie? Yeah, it’s Audrey. There’s some guy across the street yelling at the Wilsons’ house, but I think he’s talking to you.” Oh, fuck. Horrified, I spun around on my knees. A teenage couple stood under a front porch light at a home across the street. The girl was talking into her phone. “Dude,” the guy called out. “I think you’re at the wrong house.” Fuck. Me. Behind the couple, the front door opened and a barrel-chested man came storming out the front door wearing jeans, a USMC sweatshirt, and a scowl. “What’s going on out here? Who’s shouting?” “That guy over there is telling Winnie that he’s sorry and he loves her, but he’s at the wrong house,” said the girl. “I feel really bad for him.” “What?” The man’s chest puffed out further and he squinted in my direction. Then Winnie’s mom appeared on the porch, pulling a cardigan around her. “Is everything okay?” No. Everything was not okay. “Who is that guy?” her dad asked, and by his tone I could tell what he meant was, Who is that fucking idiot? “Is it Dex?” Frannie leaned forward and squinted. “Is that you, Dex?” “Yeah. It’s me.” I’d never wanted a sinkhole to open up and swallow me as badly as I did at that moment. If my kids hadn’t been there, I might have taken off on foot. Just then, a car pulled into their driveway, and my stomach lurched when Winnie jumped out of the passenger side. Her friend Ellie got out of the driver’s side and looked back and forth between Winnie and me. “Holy shit,” she said. “Dex?” Winnie started walking down the drive and stopped at the sidewalk, gaping at me kneeling in the spotlight from the streetlamp above. “What on earth are you doing?” “Hi, Winnie!” Hallie and Luna started jumping up and down and waving like mad. “Hi!” And then, because apparently there wasn’t a big enough audience, another car pulled up in front of the MacAllisters’ house, and a second teenage girl jumped out. “Bye!” she yelled, waving as the car drove off. Then she noticed everyone outside. “Oh, crap. Did I miss curfew or something?” “No,” the first teenage girl said, hopping down from the porch. “Omigod, Emmeline, this is amazing. Kyle was just leaving when this man pulled up, jumped out of his car, and starts shouting to Winnie that he loves her and he wants another chance—but he was yelling at the Wilsons’ house, not ours. Not that it mattered, because she wasn’t even here.” “Audrey, be quiet!” Winnie put her hands on her head. “Dex. What is this? Why are you on your knees?” “We told him to do that!” Hallie shouted proudly. “Because that’s what the ogre would do!

Remarkably, we still have a ‘wild’ Indian’s account of his capture and incarceration. In 1878, when he was an old man, a Kamia called Janitin told an interviewer: I and two of my relatives went down ... to the beach ... we did no harm to anyone on the road, and ... we thought of nothing more than catching and drying clams in order to carry them to our village. While we were doing this, we saw two men on horseback coming rapidly towards us; my relatives were immediately afraid and they fled with all speed, hiding themselves in a very dense willow grove ... As soon as I saw myself alone, I also became afraid ... and ran to the forest ... but already it was too late, because in a moment they overtook me and lassoed and dragged me for a long distance, wounding me much with the branches over which they dragged me, pulling me lassoed as I was with their horses running; after this they roped me with my arms behind and carried me off to the Mission of San Miguel, making me travel almost at a run in order to keep up with their horses, and when I stopped a little to catch my wind, they lashed me with the lariats that they carried, making me understand by signs that I should hurry; after much travelling in this manner, they diminished the pace and lashed me in order that I would always travel at the pace of the horses. When we arrived at the mission, they locked me in a room for a week; the father [a Dominican priest] made me go to his habitation and he talked to me by means of an interpreter, telling me that he would make me a Christian, and he told me many things that I did not understand, and Cunnur, the interpreter, told me that I should do as the father told me, because now I was not going to be set free, and it would go very bad with me if I did not consent in it. They gave me atole de mayz[corn gruel] to eat which I did not like because I was not accustomed to that food; but there was nothing else to eat. One day they threw water on my head and gave me salt to eat, and with this the interpreter told me that I was now Christian and that I was called Jesús: I knew nothing of this, and I tolerated it all because in the end I was a poor Indian and did not have recourse but to conform myself and tolerate the things they did with me. The following day after my baptism, they took me to work with the other Indians, and they put me to cleaning a milpa [cornfield] of maize; since I did not know how to manage the hoe that they gave me, after hoeing a little, I cut my foot and could not continue working with it, but I was put to pulling out the weeds by hand, and in this manner I did not finish the task that they gave me. In the afternoon they lashed me for not finishing the job, and the following day the same thing happened as on the previous day. Every day they lashed me unjustly because I did not finish what I did not know how to do, and thus I existed for many days until I found a way to escape; but I was tracked and they caught me like a fox; there they seized me by lasso as on the first occasion, and they carried me off to the mission torturing me on the road. After we arrived, the father passed along the corridor of the house, and he ordered that they fasten me to the stake and castigate me; they lashed me until I lost consciousness, and I did not regain consciousness for many hours afterwards. For several days I could not raise myself from the floor where they had laid me, and I still have on my shoulders the marks of the lashes which they gave me then.

And the reluctance, inability, or outright refusal of the American government to shift targets would contribute to the killing. Wilson took no public note of the disease, and the thrust of the government was not diverted. The relief effort for influenza victims would find no assistance in the Food Administration or the Fuel Administration or the Railroad Administration. From neither the White House nor any other senior administration post would there come any leadership, any attempt to set priorities, any attempt to coordinate activities, any attempt to deliver resources.

In examining the history of cities, I looked for material in markets, souks and bazaars; in swimming pools, stadiums and parks; in street-food stalls, coffee houses and cafés; in shops, malls and department stores. I interrogated paintings, novels, films and songs as much as official records in search of the lived experience of cities and the intensity of their daily life.

This is how scientists investigate sensitisation in the lab. They condition porn users’ sexual arousal and dopamine activation to items that are not normally arousing. Such research helps explain why turning on your device or hearing your parents leave the house can give you ants in your pants. One of these studies also found that porn addicts habituated faster to sexual images. Their reward systems lit up less for familiar porn. To prevent habituation, the porn addict needs to seek out a constant supply of novel porn, perhaps conditioning himself to new genres along the way.

The share-and-share-alike anti-establishment ethos of the Topanga Canyon Hollywood hippie entertainment class of the late sixties was what Dennis Wilson offered these ragmuffins. However, pretty quickly, these garbage-eating, acid-tripping, clap-ridden, singsong-sounding runaways proved themselves to be a bunch of freeloading ingrates. They wrecked Wilson's pad and cost him thousands of dollars in venereal-disease medicine and lost, stolen, and damaged property. Until, finally, Wilson just moved out of the house and left it to his business manager to evict the squalid squatters.

A man conserves the temperature in his house. He maintains a thermostat that perpetuates tranquility.

A man defends the temperature in his house. He maintains a thermostat that perpetuates tranquility.

A man safeguards the temperature in his house. He maintains a thermostat that perpetuates tranquility.

We are not privileged to imitate the American Founders in one respect. We do not have the option of sailing to a new world and starting over. We cannot move out of this dilapidated house in order to go build a new one. No, it must be a remodel project. The house is run down, and so we must fix it up. Not only so, but we have to do this while the house is also on fire. And at the same time, many of the other residents like it just the way it is and are fighting us tooth and nail. All this means that we need to have a robust theology of resistance.

Isn’t it a good job Mrs Wilson didn’t share your ideas?’ Furlong looked at her. ‘Where would my mother have gone? Where would I be now?’ ‘Weren’t Mrs Wilson’s cares far from any of ours?’ Eileen said. ‘Sitting out in that big house with her pension and a farm of land and your mother and Ned working under her. Was she not one of the few women on this earth who could do as she pleased?

would long outlast the circumstances of its origin. I define the Redemption era as starting in 1877, when the last of the former Confederate states was reclaimed by Southern Democrats, and as reaching its zenith in horror—the highest point of the lowest low—with the screening by President Woodrow Wilson at the White House in 1915 of D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.

The star over Bethlehem is not what we were expecting. If we don’t accept the astrological math option, then that means the star came down into our sky, and stood over a particular house—fifty feet up, say. Does faithfulness to Scripture require us to accept absurdities? That a flaming ball of gas, many times larger than our entire earth, came down into Palestine in order to provide first century GPS services? And that it did so without incinerating the globe? As I’ve mentioned earlier, we need to take a lesson here from our medieval fathers in the faith, brought to us via Narnia. “In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.” If we can leave our bodies behind when we go to Heaven, why cannot a star leave its body behind to come to earth? But any way you take it, the Christian faith flat contradicts the truncated cosmology of moderns. Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. And if you choose the wrong way, you are going to have to stop sending Christmas cards.

I remember one time, when members of a particular sect of Christian Protestant came to our house on a Sunday afternoon, my father asked them to describe their concept of the kingdom of heaven. A well-groomed man with a Ned Flanders mustache said, sipping some coffee, “Well, sometime in the near future, there will be a great rumbling from above, lightning will strike, and there will be terrible storms. The sky will open up, and down will come Jesus Christ on a cloud with a great trumpet blast. There will be an incredibly beautiful city with gold and silver turrets that descends with angels on it, and this is the kingdom of God. The good Christians will get into the city, and it will float away with Jesus to be with God, the Father, and the rest of the people will be left behind, left on earth to perish.” And then he politely responded with something to the effect of, “What is the Baha’i concept?” My dad, a wise spiritual teacher and public speaker, responded, “Well, in a lot of ways, it’s very similar. There will be great storms and lightning and thunder, and the skies will open up. Down from a hole in the clouds doesn’t come a city or Jesus or anything but rather a bunch of bags of cement. Some shovels and hammers. Bricks and mortar and nails and lumber. And finally, at the very end, a note floats down on the breeze and lands on top of all the supplies. It reads: ‘Kingdom of God on Earth: Build-It-Yourself Kit.

Chronic excessive use of amphetamines also produces a situation, in a matter of months, much worse than that of any heroin addict – except, of course, for those junkies who have been through “cold turkey” withdrawal in a city jail and never quite recovered from it. You are wise if you fear heroin – it is a bad trip in the long run. But fearing the heroin addict is one of the most absurd prejudices of our time. Even under our present laws, which makes it necessary for most of them to steal to get their junk, few are armed robbers; true to their passive and defeatist personality type, they generally become sneak thieves striking only when a house is empty, evidently feeling that even with a gun they couldn’t terrorize anybody into surrendering property to them knowingly. William S. Burroughs has commented that, in his years as a junkie, he hardly recalls an addict who committed a crime of violence. Burroughs, one ex-addict who doesn’t make his living by lecturing for the police, adds pointedly: They tend to be sneak thieves, shoplifters and lush rollers.* If they could obtain the drug legally, their crimes would vanish. As an occasional citizen of New York, I consider the burglaries committed by desperate addicts to be immoral and a goddamned nuisance. I say give them some legal junk before they steal my typewriter. ~•~ * Those who rob sleeping drunks, usually on subways.

9. Service to the Poor. Here at SoulBoom, we don’t like the word “charity.” It implies the worst kind of service to the needy—pity for “those poor, poor people” who don’t have stuff, so we patronizingly hand out sandwiches and juice boxes and knapsacks to the “have-nots” and do nothing to change the imbalanced, unjust systems that led to this poverty mess in the first place. Nothing against soup kitchens, but foundationally, the solutions to poverty must go beyond a meal and temporary housing. Therefore, our new faith will ask all its followers to work in substantive ways to prioritize and empower the disenfranchised—providing mental health services, access to addiction services, community centers, job skills, education, and opportunity. And yes, juice boxes and sandwiches when appropriate.

If a woman receives only cruelty or indifference from her husband, father, brother, or son, why should she trust her well-being to any of them?

Perhaps more important than should he leave the blob behind was the question could he leave the blob behind? He grabbed his car keys and phone and headed out the door to see if the blob would follow, hoping it wouldn’t put another hole in his house. It followed immediately, exiting through the hole in the window. Wilson barked his disapproval from inside the house as if objecting to the blob having a doggy door.

By this time, [Agrippa] had written his major work, the three-volume treatise On Occult Philosophy, although this had to wait more than twenty years for publication. It is a remarkable work for a man of twenty-four. He begins by stating clearly that magic is nothing to do with sorcery or the devil, but with various occult gifts—prophecy, second sight and so on. A typical chapter of the first volume is entitled ‘Of Light, Colours, Candles and Lamps, and to what Stars, Houses and Elements several Colours are ascribed.’ The ‘houses,’ of course, refers to the signs of the zodiac; each planet has two, one for the day and one for the night. But his central belief is stated at the beginning of the sixty-third chapter: ‘The fantasy, or imaginative power, has a ruling power over the passions of the soul, when these are bound to sensual apprehensions.’ That is to say, when my passions are bound up with physical things, rather than with ideas, my imagination begins to play a large part in my feelings. Some slight depression sends my spirits plummeting; I become a victim of a see-saw of emotion. The next sentence is slightly obscure, but expands this idea: ‘For [imagination] does, of its own accord, according to the diversity of the passions, first of all change the physical body with a sensible transmutation, by changing the accidents in the body, and by moving the spirit upward or downward, inward or outward…’ This is a remarkable sentence to have been written in 1510. It not only recognises the extent to which human beings, especially stupid ones, are the victims of auto-suggestion, but also that these moods affect the body directly. There is always present in hermetic literature this suggestion that man’s body is more dependent on his will than he ever realises. Agrippa goes on to point out that lovers can experience such a strong tie that they feel one another’s illnesses. People can die of sadness, when the will becomes inoperative. These doctrines of Agrippa might be compared with the assertion of Paracelsus, seven years his junior, that ‘Resolute imagination is the beginning of all magical operations,’ and that ‘It is possible that my spirit…through an ardent will alone, and without a sword, can stab and wound others.

Condoms and fandangle size: penile sizes vary: Southeast Asian condoms, for example, may be rather small, while African ones are large. The shape of penises is also very diverse, so not all condoms fit all comers

The country has come to look to the White House for a steadying hand, in word and deed, in uneasy times. As Woodrow Wilson observed more than a century ago, the president is “at the front of our government, where our own thoughts and the attention of men everywhere is centered upon him.

The proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with reference to changes in taxation are in like manner embodied in resolutions in Committee of Ways and Means, and subsequently, upon the report of the Committee, passed by the House in the shape of Bills, "Ways and Means Bills" generally pass the Lords without trouble. The absolute control of the Commons over the subjects of revenue and supply has been so long established that the upper House would not now dream of disputing it; and as the power of the Lords is simply a privilege to accept or reject a money bill as a whole, including no right to amend, the peers are wont to let such bills go through without much scrutiny.

D.A.R.E. doesn’t work. A number of well-controlled experiments have shown that the program has no effect on students’ use of tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs. In 2003, the United States General Accounting Office surveyed the evidence and reached the same conclusion. (Apparently, the White House doesn’t pay close attention to reports from the General Accounting Office, or at least not this one.) Amazing amounts of time, effort, and money (more than one billion dollars annually) have been devoted to a program that was not adequately tested and, when it was, turned out to be ineffective.

Researchers in California used the social norms approach to try to get people to reduce their use of electricity. They took readings from the electricity meters at 290 houses twice within a two-week period, in order to get a baseline measure of how much electricity each house was consuming. Then they left a flyer on the doorknob of each house that showed how much electricity that household had been using and the average amount of electricity that their neighbors were using. Think about what this would be like: you come home one day and see the flyer on your doorknob, and read that you are using more electricity than your neighbors. “Whoa,” you might think. “I guess I’m more of an energy hog than I thought.” This probably makes you feel a little embarrassed, and so you stop leaving lights on when you leave a room and maybe even use your air conditioning a little less. This is just what the researchers found: people who discovered that they were above-average electricity users decreased their use of electricity over the next few weeks. But what about the people who found out that they were using less electricity than their neighbors? The feedback had the opposite effect, leading to an increase in power use. “Why should I skimp on the air conditioning,” these folks seemed to say, “when the Joneses and the Smiths are pumping out a lot more cool air than I am?” Thus we see the danger of social norms campaigns: they can backfire among people who find out that they are doing better than average. Perceived norms are a powerful thing. If we think we’re conserving more energy than others, we slack off on our electricity use; if we find out we are drinking less than others, we might down a few more beers at the next party.

We have to learn to apply wisdom in every situation and not "spiritualize" every temptation. Sometimes we need to overcome temptation by prayer and receiving grace; other times we need to put on some cheery music, open the curtains, and make a pot of coffee. God has given us the blessing of food when we are hungry, Advil when we have a headache, and Starbucks when we need a serious perk-up. We should avail ourselves of these blessings with gratitude to God our Creator, and not think we are somehow being unspiritual if we look to His creation for help and comfort.

THE MAN IN THE PINK SHIRT stopped outside his house.

Kiana loved birds," Breena told him late one dusky evening. "When she was just a few summers old, she would run beneath them as they flew, her chubby arms stretched out as if tmo take flight alongside them." She sniffed and wrapped her arms around her stomach. "A few weeks before the attack, she told me that she was still going to fly one day. 'I look at the birds, and I see freedom,' she said. 'To soar above the hurt of the world, to be too high for the wars of men to touch you: that is what it means to fly.

ORIGIN OF HOLLYWOOD On ride the masked men, wrapped in white sheets, bearing white crosses, torches held high: mounted avengers of the virtue of ladies and the honor of gentlemen strike fear into Negroes hungering for damsels’ white flesh. At the height of a wave of lynchings, D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation sings a hymn of praise to the Ku Klux Klan. This is Hollywood’s first blockbuster and the greatest box office success ever for a silent movie. It is also the first film to ever open at the White House. President Woodrow Wilson gives it a standing ovation. Applauding it, he applauds himself: freedom’s famous flag-bearer wrote most of the texts that accompany the epic images. The president’s words explain that the emancipation of the slaves was “a veritable overthrow of Civilization in the South, the white South under the heel of the black South.” Ever since, chaos reigns because blacks are “men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences.” But the president lights the lamp of hope: “At last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan.” And even Jesus himself comes down from heaven at the end of the movie to give his blessing.

The United States had one year to prepare for Prohibition from its ratification on January 16, 1919, and in those 12 months, many people, mostly the wealthy, built basements and attics in their houses to store as much alcohol as they could. Even President Wilson the cellars of the White House. The Act did not prohibit the consumption of beverages held at home before day one of Prohibition,

If Val hadn’t been there, I’m not sure if I could have made it. Her chatter kept my mind off how much I had to do. We booked a room, called the cleaner and a locksmith then grabbed a coffee at Starbucks to give me a short blast of energy. CHAPTER 20 The cleaners had taken an hour to arrive, and another hour to get the mess out of the house. Val and I sat on the floor of the untouched roof patio, well untouched in that they’d thrown the furniture over the

On September 28, 1870, after heavy bombardment, during the Siege of Strasbourg, the French were forced to surrender the heavily fortified fortress. The Municipal Library housed in the Dominican church, with its unique collection of medieval manuscripts, rare Renaissance books and historical artifacts were destroyed by fire, as were many other Gothic buildings in the city center. Of the population of 150,000 people, over 600 were left dead and 3,200 were wounded and left without shelter. Strasbourg was surrendered to the Prussian General August von Werder and thus became part of the German Empire. In 1919, following the Treaty of Versailles, the city was returned to France in accordance with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points." With this many Germans left Strasbourg and went back to Germany. It wasn’t until in June of 1940 during World War II and after the Fall of France, that Alsace was annexed by Germany again. The final Liberation of Strasbourg took place on 23 November 1944, thus returning the Alsace district to France.

I went round the side of the house, and stared at the garden in horror. The ivy had almost taken over. There were still flowers in the borders, but weeds rioted everywhere, choking all the blooms. The stream still trickled in spite of vast tangles of waterweed. I followed it to the end of the garden. The little Japanese house was lurid green with moss. I sat on the cold seat and shut my eyes tight.

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

she took over the lead spot in Glass House, a group that recorded only a few records.

That was how Juke felt on the porch of String Wilson’s new house. He wanted, and he didn’t want to want.

We are not surprised at Romeo loving Juliet, though he is a Montague and she is a Capulet. But if we found in addition that Lady Capulet was by birth a Montague, that Lady Montague was a first cousin of old Capulet, that Mecutio was at once the nephew of a Capulet and the brother-in-law of a Montague, that count Paris was related on his father’s side to one house and on his mother’s side to the other, that Tybalt was Romeo’s uncle’s stepson and that the Friar who had married Romeo and Juliet was Juliet’s uncle and Romeo’s first cousin once removed, we would probably conclude that the feud between the two houses was being kept up for dramatic entertainment of the people of Verona.

Had the European traveller chanced upon Philip Dru, Administrator, a novel published anonymously the previous year about an America of the near future, they might have felt their curiosity particularly aroused – or perhaps, on further inspection, they might have wished to get off the boat. Here was an American book with a strange and unlikely vision of the United States, imagining that country in 1920, and on the eve of a second civil war. They would not have realised that the New York address, ‘Mandell House’, given to the book’s hero, Philip Dru, provided the clue to its author: Texan businessman and Democratic Party fixer ‘Colonel’ Edward Mandell House (the military title was honorary). And only if they followed American politics extremely closely would the name have meant anything to them – it was that of the closest political adviser to the newly elected President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.

Tick could feel his eyes start to droop again, so he pressed the stereo unit and turned up the volume. His and Sally’s favorite song was burned on every inch of the CD, so he could play it over and over. “Mustang Sally.” He started to sing along with Wilson Pickett at the top of his lungs, “Ride, Sally, ride!” He was two streets away from where he lived on David Court when he saw the strobe lights shooting upward to the sky. Blue, red, and white just like it was the Fourth of July. But it wasn’t the Fourth of July. He knew what the lights meant. Good cop that he was, he knew he was going to have to stop to offer any assistance if needed. Sally, the kids, and sleep would have to wait just a bit longer. He turned off the CD player and turned the corner, and his world came to a screeching halt. He saw the barricade, the yellow tape, the crazy arcing lights, the crowds of people, and too many police cars to count. All parked in front of his house, in

During a 1985 interview on CBS he lauded Philadelphia’s first black mayor, W. Wilson Goode, as “an inspiration to the nation” after Goode had approved dropping a bomb from a helicopter onto a row house in a densely packed, black, residential Philadelphia neighborhood. The aerial bombing resulted in a massive wall of flames that caused the death of eleven residents, including five children, and the incineration of sixty-one surrounding homes. In response, a federal jury awarded over $12 million to the homeowners. Nevertheless, Gates told wide-eyed reporter Lesley Stahl that Wilson Goode had “jumped on [his] heroes list,” and “by golly,” he added, “that’s not a long list.” That

And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses” (Neh. 4:14).

convened) against domestic Violence. ARTICLE V The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of it's equal Suffrage in the Senate. ARTICLE VI All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation. This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. ARTICLE VII The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same. Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names, Go. WASHINGTON— Presid. and deputy from Virginia New Hampshire John Langdon Nicholas Gilman Massachusetts Nathaniel Gorham Rufus King Connecticut Wm. Saml. Johnson Roger Sherman New York Alexander Hamilton New Jersey Wil: Livingston David Brearley Wm. Paterson Jona: Dayton Pennsylvania B Franklin Thomas Mifflin Robt Morris Geo. Clymer Thos FitzSimons Jared Ingersoll James Wilson Gouv Morris Delaware Geo: Read Gunning Bedford jun John Dickinson Richard Bassett Jaco: Broom Maryland James Mchenry

Nay, adding a meanness which approaches atrocity, they tax the hard earnings of the colored man to support schools and build school-houses for white children, from the doors of which the poor black youth are rudely driven. Henry Highland Garnet, A memorial discourse; delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives, Washington City, D.C. on Sabbath, February 12, 1865. With an introduction by James McCune Smith, M.D. (Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson, 1865, p. 27 [The quote is from McCune's biographical sketch of Garnet].

[…] Under such auspices, in 1835, he went to Canaan Academy, at Canaan, New Hampshire, Rev. William Scales, principal; he was kindly received into the family of George Kimball, Esq. There he first met Miss Julia Williams, formerly a pupil of Miss Prudence Crandall, Canterbury, Connecticut, who was imprisoned for teaching colored girls; Miss Williams subsequently became his wife. Among the pupils at the Academy were his old schoolmates, Alexander Crummell and Thomas S. Sydney. They joyfully entered upon their studies, penetrated with the hopes of a race to whom the higher branches of human learning had hitherto been a sealed book. But the spirit of caste, which we have already spoken of, as being, in the rural districts, still stronger against the education of colored youth than in the cities, soon concentrated its malign influence upon this Academy. In August of the same year (1835) a mob assembled in Canaan, and with the aid of ninety-five yoke of oxen and two days’ hard labor, finally succeeded in removing the Academy from its site and afterwards they destroyed it by fire. The same mob surrounded the house of Mr Kimball and fired shot into the room occupied by Garnet: to add to the mean atrocity of the act, he was at that time, in consequence of increasing lameness, obliged to use a crutch in walking, and was confined to his room by a fever. But neither sickness, nor infirmity, nor the howling of the mob could subdue his fiery spirit; he spent most of the day in casting bullets in anticipation of the attack, and when the mob finally came he replied to their fire with a double-barrelled shot-gun, blazing from his window, and soon drove the cowards away. Henry Highland Garnet, A memorial discourse; delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives, Washington City, D.C. on Sabbath, February 12, 1865. With an introduction by James McCune Smith, M.D. (Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson, 1865), pp 29-30 [The quote is from Smith's biographical sketch of Garnet]

In December of each year the Tolowa people gathered together at the Axis Mundi to celebrate the creation of the earth. It’s a ten day celebration beginning at the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year ... It would take days for people to arrive and as the population grew, the new Anglo settlement in Crescent City became a little worried, they thought that the Indians were maybe gathering to ... wipe them out or something. Since they had only been in the area less than a year, the settlers didn’t realize that this was a normal annual thing. So the Tolowa people all across the area and the Yurok further south gathered together at the centre of the world, to dance and celebrate ... They danced all night until morning, and then they rested during the day and prepared food and so forth and then in the evening the dance started again ... And each night the dance became a little more elaborate than the night before ... On about the sixth night ... the local militiamen got together, and they drank some whisky and got a good buzz going, and then they got on their horses and went out and surrounded the village, which was one of the larger towns in the area. And of course we all lived in plankhouses made from redwood then. They lined up along a slough which lies in front of the village and then they began to set the buildings on fire, and as the people were trying to escape they were killed. Anybody who jumped into the slough to get away was gunned down into the water. And it happens that I have a great-great-uncle who survived, he was in the sweat house and he slid out and went into the slough and got away, and then he pushed himself southward in the slough. In the morning the entire village was set aflame, and hundreds of people were burned and killed outright. He said the slough was literally red with the blood of the people, and the babies that were found crying were just tossed into the flames to destroy them as well. So several hundred people perished there at ... Yan’daak’$$$$t, and later the place was called Burnt Ranch. And the local people still know where Burnt Ranch is ... The next year, because Axis Mundi was destroyed, the dance was moved to ‘Eechuulet, and they started to dance there and they were attacked again and my great-grandmother said that there were seven layers of bodies in the dance house when they burned it. They just stacked them in and torched the house down and ... burned them up there. The next year, 1855, there was ... a battle at the mouth of the Smith River, where about seventy of our people were killed. But by this time our numbers were drastically reduced...

I’m Bertie Byrd. I rent your house since you don’t live here anymore.” “Did you say Dirty Bird?” He laughed out loud. “Oh, that’s a good one, Mr. Fortney. I never heard that one before. A real knee-slapper. Where’s the key?

The only major thing I’d done all day was lay out a plan of action to find the key that Pete Fortney used to let himself into my home. I’d decided to start at the front porch and look in every conceivable place, working my way clock-wise around the exterior, ground level, and eaves of the house. I’d devote fifteen minutes every evening until I found it. For my own peace of mind, I had to find that key.

But it was my first evidence that Diane lived in a world even bigger than the Big House, a world where grief and joy moved as ponderously as tides, with the weight of an ocean behind them.

All their lives they had lived with the certain knowledge that there had to be a secret symbol on the outside of their house that said "Suckers live here" in cat, dog, and several other animal languages.

Pike moved along the side of the house, looking into each window he passed, and checking for signs of tampering. The first room appeared to be a guest bedroom, and the next was the kitchen. The bedroom appeared undisturbed, but Pike’s view was limited. He saw dirty dishes, three empty beer bottles, and a cutting board on the kitchen counter. Pike told himself the dishes indicated Wilson and Dru planned to return home, but the goat heads and flies hung over him like battlefield smoke. After

Circumcision was the sign of the promise, i.e., it was the sign of the gospel. When the law of Moses came, hundreds of years after Abraham, it came in partial fulfillment of the covenant with Abraham (Exod. 2:24–25). It was a temporary administration of shadows, ceremonies, and types, all designed, when rightly understood, to prepare the way for the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. Abraham had been shown the blueprints of a great house, and he believed that God would in fact build it (Gal. 3:6, 8).

As Christ teaches us the nature of abiding, we see that He is not contrasting abiding with not abiding. The contrast is rather between abiding temporarily and abiding permanently. In this fallen world, apostasy, church discipline, fruitlessness, rebuke, and scandal are to be expected. The house of Christ still has slaves and sons, and we should not be surprised when the differences between them become manifest.

I called Shay and before I could speak, she said, “Did you figure out a way to get her last name?” “I’m at Yuto’s and she’s here and it looks like she may be on a date.” “Oooh.” She sounded way too excited. “How does she look?” Like she always did? The same way she had when she’d been in my apartment earlier? “Like a shark wearing a human costume? Gorgeous but deadly? And she makes me feel inadequate in every way that a woman can possibly feel inadequate?” “Well, that’s not true. You’re not a mother yet and that’s going to be a whole new level of inadequacies. I meant, is she dressed up?” “I don’t know. She’s wearing a dress, but she was wearing the same thing at my house.” “What kind of woman makes a guy what we’re calling soup and then meets up with another dude?” Much as I didn’t want to be fair, in this instance I had to be. “You can’t mock the borscht. It was really good.

President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, re-segregated several federal agencies, and screened the first movie ever shown at the White House, the racist movie 'Birth of a Nation', originally titled 'The Klansman'.

The hotel balconies were mobbed. The beach was mobbed. A thousand heads and lenses swiveled in the same direction. Estimates later put the crowd in and around the Cape at nearly two million. According to police reports, more than a hundred wallets were lifted that night. There were two fatal stabbings, fifteen attempted assaults, and one premature labor. (The child, a four-pound girl, was delivered on a trestle table at the International House of Pancakes in Cocoa Beach.)

Bryant died in 1878, ironically because he’d become the park’s go-to guy for dedications and ribbon cuttings. Bryant always showed up, speech in hand. At the unveiling of a bust of Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini on the park’s west side near the sheepfold, the sun was blazing hot; as Bryant sat on the dais, he began to feel weak. He gave his prepared remarks, then walked across the park to rest at his friend James Grant Wilson’s house. As he mounted the front stoop of Wilson’s home, he collapsed, fell backward, and struck his head. Bryant lingered a few days before dying from his injuries.

But He is the Lord, and He might tell us of some other remarkable things he has done. He might tell us about the time He sent one of His celestial glories down into our sky over Bethlehem. And He did this to especially mark the most remarkable thing that He ever did—His eternal Word took the form of a baby boy. And the miracle in the sky above was nothing in comparison to the miracle in Mary’s arms in the house below.

FORMER CONGRESSMAN ALBERT Sidney Burleson of Texas had landed in Wilson’s cabinet thanks to his longtime patron, Colonel House. Burleson “has been called the worst postmaster general in American history,” writes the historian G. J. Meyer, “but that is unfair; he introduced parcel post and airmail and improved rural service. It is fair to say, however, that he may have been the worst human being ever to serve as postmaster general.

But Rusk's style soon irritated him [Averell Harriman], and those who were around him detected a very subtle patronizing of the Secretary. (It showed at one staff meeting of high-level State officials: Rusk, Ball, Harriman, the Assistant Secretaries. Rusk addressed his team, saying that Harold Wilson was in town and that it looked as if he was going to win the election and become Prime Minister, and perhaps they had better do something for him. Did anyone know where he was staying? No one knew, so Rusk dispatched Ball to call the British embassy and find out. Ball left, came back white-faced a few minutes later, and whispered to Rusk, "He's Averell's house guest." Harriman, sitting there, never moved a muscle.)p197

We came to a tiny hamlet. There were no more than six little houses nestling in the deep steep valley. Smoke, rising through the rough wooden roof-slats, made the homes look cosy and inviting but we didn’t expect a welcome there.

Meanwhile, the most frequent question I am casually asked about ants is, 'What do I do about the ones in my kitchen?' My answer is, Watch where you step, be careful of little lives, consider becoming an amateur myrmecologist, and contribute to their scientific study. Further, why should these wondrous little insects not visit your kitchen? They carry no disease, and may help eliminate other insects that do carry disease. You are a million times larger than each one. You could hold an entire colony in your cupped hands. You inspire fear in them; they should not in you. I recommend that you make use of your kitchen ants by feeding them and reflecting upon what you see, rather like an informal tour of a very foreign country. Place a few pieces of food the size of a thumbnail on the floor or sink. House ants are especially fond of honey, sugar water, chopped nuts, and canned tuna. A scout in close vicinity will soon find one of the baits and, to the degree the colony is hungry, run excitedly back to the nest. There will follow social behavior so alien to human experience that it might as well be on some other planet.

The town is attracting a whole load of yobs who just want to roam around picking fights and getting into trouble. I’m not surprised Russell’s dad was really worried about him being out late.’ ‘Russell can look after himself, Dad. He’s not some sad little wimp.’ ‘He could be Mr Muscles Macho Man. It wouldn’t make any difference if a whole gang started in on him.’ ‘You’re getting totally paranoid, Dad.’ ‘Maybe. I don’t know. But how about if you and Russell met up after school and then he went back home around nine?’ ‘Dad! We’re not Eggs’s age!’ ‘I know, I know – but you’re as precious to me as Eggs and I don’t need another night like Thursday. Look, you’re still supposed to be in the doghouse for that. I’ll let you see Russell, but I’m going to stick to this nine o’clock curfew for the time being. I think that’s more than fair.’ ‘I don’t!’ ‘Well it gets dark by nine – so you couldn’t do any sketching then, could you?’ says Dad, smiling. I smile back weakly. I don’t know who’s bluffing who. But at least I can see Russell – even if it’s only in daylight! I go up to my bedroom and read his letter again. Several times more. Then I go downstairs and ring Nadine and tell her that it’s all OK and that Russell walked round and round the town looking for me, practically knocking at every house door. Nadine isn’t quite as impressed as I’d hoped. She’s got her Claudie album playing full blast (her family are obviously out) and she’s singing along instead of concentrating fully. I need to ask her something. ‘Nadine, do you really think Russell looks seriously shifty?’ Nadine herself sounds as if she’s doing some serious shifting the other end of the phone. ‘No, no, Ellie, not at all. I was just, you know, saying stuff to comfort you. I don’t think his eyes are too close together either. I think it was just his intense expression when he was sketching you.

their wives at the same time. Later, they’d have to explain it all to the sheriff, but when the sheriff finally reached him, he had to keep it short before leaving with Barbara and Beth to walk to the restaurant for the reception. He simply said, “Luck, there are four cans of kerosene still under the church. I think that Jameson was planning to not only blow up the church but start a massive fire with the coal oil under there. He could have set the whole town afire.” Luck pretty much summed up the day when he said, “You just couldn’t have a traditional wedding; could you?” Even Barbara laughed when Carl said that he didn’t know because this was his first and only wedding. “Well, I’ll take care of the kerosene and the rest. Just come by later with your father and Tom Wilson to make your statements.” Carl said, “Thanks, Luck.” He took Barbara’s arm and followed his parents as they headed for the hotel. Beth was perched on her grandpapa’s shoulders. Tom and Emily walked behind them leading a long line of guests. _____ After the long reception luncheon, the wedding party returned to the boarding house. Beth had been told that the house would no longer accept tenants and that now she would have her own room upstairs. She was initially upset that her mama and papa might be angry with her. Then Carl explained that now that she was almost grown up, she needed her privacy. But if she had any bad dreams or was afraid for

It was a weird thing. Before the divorce, my mom had been kind of strict, the triplets constantly wrecking shit as she sternly tried to wrangle them. She had no patience for people who might complicate her life or create more work for her, was always rolling her eyes at how stupid everyone else was. She made checklists that no one else ever checked. She frowned a lot. I was slightly afraid of her, even though I knew that she loved me. And though I knew the divorce had messed her up, it had also seemed to relax her, like the bad thing had finally happened and she didn't have to keep waiting for it. She chilled out. The triplets, if they burned down the Dairy Queen, well, that was someone else's problem. If I invited some strange boy into our house and made out with him, who was she to intervene? We were eating pizza on a weekday. She was the coolest mom in Coalfield.

A man who is charged with pulling down strongholds must be a student, therefore, of two things. He must be a student of the gear he is using, and he must be a student of the tower he is charged with toppling. He must know the gospel, and the Scripture that houses it, and he must also know the state of the current imaginations, whether those imaginations are healthy or diseased. He needs to know where to attach the ropes. This means that in order to have a true impact, a local church must understand some of the fundamental theological issues in play and how they intersect with the large cultural issues of our day.

Happy are the people whose God is the Lord!” (Ps. 144:15).

After the ribbon-cutting ceremony, at precisely eleven-thirty, the lights suddenly went on throughout the entire building, and Smith used an occasional silver key to open the doors. The magic act with the lights did not yet qualify as a tradition but at least had a precedent. In 1913, Frank W. Woolworth had inveigled President Woodrow Wilson into pressing a button from the White House that would turn on the Woolworth Building’s lights, and Smith had President Herbert Hoover do the same. On the stroke of the half hour, Hoover took a break from a cabinet meeting to flick the switch in Washington.

The US chief technology officer and one of her deputies are former Google employees. • The acting assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s antitrust division is a former antitrust attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the Silicon Valley firm that represented Google. • The White House’s chief digital officer is a former Google employee.

The elaboration of such emic realities or reality-tunnels can reach extremes of creativity, in which a person "invents" a totally new and individualized gloss on the whole of existence. Such great creators will either win Nobel prizes (for art or science) or will get thrown in "mental hospitals,” depending on how much skill they have at selling their new vision to others. Some will even get locked up in nut-houses and later become recognized as great scientific pioneers — e.g., Semmelweiss, the first physician to suggest that surgeons should wash their hands before operating.

Oh, no, he didn’t write that. That’s what he said to me. It was on the campaign train, not in the White House. We were talking about mistakes that other people had made—that [Woodrow] Wilson had made, that [Georges] Clemenceau had made. Yes, Spain. The neutrality with Spain was a big mistake. “That comes back to me all the time,” he said. HJ: It always struck me that the fact that some of our more progressive presidents—the Roosevelts and the Kennedys—came from wealthier backgrounds meant that they were less intimidated by other rich people, and therefore, less susceptible to special interests. The poor kids are the more dangerous ones—Reagan is so impressed with rich people—it is such an important part of his life.

turned the car around and it floated quietly down Lookout Mountain to Laurel Canyon. He took a right and drove to the canyon market, where he bought a six-pack of Anchor Steam. Then he took his beer and his questions back up the hill to Mulholland. He drove to Woodrow Wilson Drive and then down to his small house that stood on cantilevers and looked out across the Cahuenga Pass.

Covenant vows, covenant oaths don’t move. They are to be the foundation. Your feelings and sentiments do move. What happens if you make them the foundation? When they go up and down, the whole house goes up and down—like living in a volatile earthquake zone.

In the wake of the breakup I was miserable, no real money, no close friends. I was living in a house in the canyons, house-sitting for an actor I knew. Actually, I was house-sitting for an actor who was house-sitting for an actor. I had nothing going on.

Their first campaign for the dignity and rights of colored people in Oakland was to end the showing of the picture The Birth of a Nation, which portrayed Negroes as barbarians and only served to raise animosity. President Wilson revealed his prejudice by showing that vile movie as the first moving picture ever to be screened at the White House.

The right to keep arms in the home is fundamental to this tradition. Wilson discussed justifiable homicide when necessary to defend one's home as follows: "Every man's house is his castle," says my Lord Coke, in one of his reports, "and he ought to keep and defend it at his peril; and if any one be robbed in it, it shall be esteemed his own default and negligence." For this reason, one may assemble people together in order to protect and defend his house.80

When you’re coming to my house and reach Mulholland at the top of the mountain, you make a hard turn onto Woodrow Wilson Drive, then follow it along its winding path through

He was inside my house when he spoke to me, and though I called the police, they arrived too late to find him. I’m going to upload a few screenshots I took during the conversation, in case it helps in your efforts to figure out who this motherfucker is.

Friday and then proceeded to completely lose his shit over the next five hours. Two realities were created that night. There was what Wilson experienced under the influence of the psychedelic that was used in witches' spells and rituals hundreds of years ago and there was the reality that exists when you don’t do belladonna. What Wilson experienced was going outside after swallowing the drug, seeing a monster in the distance, then going back into his house to see Arlen in the kitchen, who’d become a ghoulish satanic vampire lady, scaring the bejesus outta him. It dawned on him quite suddenly that this drug was no good and he ran to the sink to retch up as much of it as he could, but it was too late. The belladonna had already blasted him out of his rational mind. He was in her grips and there was no way out. His awareness flashed only a few lucid moments where his only description of such a state was “too weird.” He observed his body doing things that his mind had little control over. He saw himself banging into the wall repeatedly. Then he heard the sink laughing, and then he was even accompanied by a dwarf on a long journey through the woods. Nothing was solid, as the dwarf became a knight in armor who decided their walk through the Yellow Springs woods would be a good place to attack him. Another flash and the knight was suddenly gone. Wilson then saw himself crawling on the ground on all fours across white-hot coals. How long had he been enduring this torture? Years? Eternity? But just beyond the red-hot burning coals, he felt searing into his skin an enticing golden glow beckoned him. Another flash and he was now on a bed in a “supernaturally golden room.” He turned his head and saw Arlen. “Her face was the pretty, intellectual face I love above all others, but her hair was a new shade of red, lustrous and lively beyond the vocabulary of a poet or even an ad man.” He touched her hair and said, “It was worth all the terror to see you so beautiful…” However, the fun was not over. At another point in the night, he was helped to the outhouse by his friend and neighbor, David Hatch. But once outside, Bob saw two Davids. Wilson kept trying to explain to Arlen and Hatch, “We must all drink more milk!” Why must we do that? We must do it, said Wilson, “for the Kennedy Administration in outer space of the Nuremberg pickle that exploded.” He stopped, embarrassed, realizing he’d been making a fool of himself. That wasn’t what he’d meant to say, so he tried again. “Where’s the dwarf?” he shouted.

The following day, Wilson was still feeling the disorienting effects of the drug. He hallucinated twice, seeing a polar bear wearing a black-turtleneck sweater walk past his house, and then seeing a green, flute-playing Pan, the goat god of nature, in his vegetable garden.139 He did not let such wild sights stop him from going to the movies with Arlen that night, but while watching the film he was hit with an intense wave of anxiety strong enough to immobilize an elephant. He barely made it out of the theater to get some air. Was he still tripping? Belladonna has had terrible effects on people for hundreds of years, giving credence to the old legend that witches and sorcerers used belladonna as a poison and a weapon. The deadly nightshade, to use another of its names, would cause terrible hallucinations and drive people to insanity. Luckily, on the following day, Wilson was fine but again at night the panic hit. This time it lasted for half an hour. To help calm himself down, he concentrated on reciting the plots of old movies to Arlen. By the time he’d finished describing the plot of the film The Third Man, the anxiety attack had passed. Wilson saw the positive in this terrifying dance with Lady Nightshade, as he wrote that the whole experience brought with it an insight into his anxiety which he realized “was sexual excitement.”140

Wilson’s early trip reports with peyote and belladonna are valuable artifacts from a first-generation psychedelic explorer's point of view. Five years before the “summer of love,” when LSD hit America's consciousness, Wilson was engaged in the bohemian tradition, in the manner of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Fitz Hugh Ludlow, author of The Hasheesh Eater (1857), of exploring one’s mind with psychotropic drugs. Wilson’s article took an unexpected turn, however, when he reported that several weeks after his first peyote trip he started having sexual feelings for “a young boy.” He continued that the attraction was so intense that he’d get an erection just driving past his house. Wilson knew that the boy was heterosexual and wouldn’t be into being hit on by an older guy, so he went no further than observing the gay fantasies as they arose and then drifted away. He didn’t panic at the thought that he may have suddenly turned gay, nor did he let the fantasies of being with a “young boy” overwhelm him. He wrote that he observed his thoughts and feelings with self-compassion as they moved through his consciousness. The article concluded with his report that a few weeks later, just as suddenly as it arrived, his attraction to this young person abruptly ended.141

Now Montezuma [a Tohono O’odham culture hero] called all the tribes together and said, ‘I am greater than anything that has ever been, greater than anything which exists now, and greater than anything that will ever be. Now, you people shall build me a tall house, floor upon floor upon floor, a house rising into the sky, rising far above this earth into the heavens, where I shall rule as Chief of all the Universe.’ The Great Mystery Power descended from the sky to reason with Montezuma, telling him to stop challenging that which cannot be challenged, but Montezuma would not listen. He said: ‘I am almighty. Let no power stand in my way. I am the Great Rebel. I shall turn this world upside down to my own liking.’ Then good changed to evil. Men began to hunt and kill animals. Disregarding the eternal laws by which humans had lived, they began to fight among themselves. The Great Mystery Power tried to warn Montezuma and the people by pushing the sun farther away from the earth and placing it where it is now. Winter, snow, ice, and hail appeared, but no one heeded this warning. In the meantime Montezuma made the people labour to put up his many-storied house, whose rooms were of coral and jet, turquoise and mother-of-pearl. It rose higher and higher, but just as it began to soar above the clouds far into the sky, the Great Mystery Power made the earth tremble. Montezuma’s many-storied house of precious stones collapsed into a heap of rubble. When that happened, the people discovered that they could no longer understand the language of the animals, and the different tribes, even though they were all human beings, could no longer understand each other. Then Montezuma shook his fists toward the sky and called: ‘Great Mystery Power, I defy you. I shall fight you. I shall tell the people not to pray or make sacrifices of corn and fruit to the Creator. I, Montezuma, am taking your place!’ The Great Mystery Power sighed, and even wept, because the one he had chosen to lead mankind had rebelled against him. Then the Great Mystery resolved to vanquish those who rose against him. He sent the locust flying far across the eastern waters, to summon a people in an unknown land, people whose faces and bodies were full of hair, who rode astride strange beasts, who were encased in iron, wielding iron weapons, who had magic hollow sticks spitting fire, thunder, and destruction. The Great Mystery Power allowed these bearded, pitiless people to come in ships across the great waters out of the east - permitted them to come to Montezuma’s country, taking away Montezuma’s power and destroying him utterly. From Montezuma and the Great Flood

they told me that the night and day were all that I could see They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up And they inclosed my brain into a narrow circle And sunk my heart into the abyss, a red round globe, hotburning, Til all from life I was obliterated and erased. Instead of morn arises a bright shadow, like an eye In the eastern cloud; instead of night, a sickly charnel house.... What Blake is intimating here is that the vision of things as ‘infinite and holy’ is not an abnormal vision, but the perfectly normal emotional state. And yet man is not born with such a vision, and he can five so far from it that he can decide at the end of his life that ‘not to be born is the best thing, and death is better than life’. Why? Blake cannot say why; he can only account for it by utilizing the legend of a Fall; by saying, as it were, ‘Men are born like smashed radio sets, and before they can function properly, they must repair themselves’. (Blake lived before the machine-age, or no doubt he would have used the same kind of simile.) In short, he used the legend of Original Sin. For readers who approach this argument for the first time, the most doubtful part about it is the proposition that men ought to see the world like Van Gogh’s Nuit Etoile as a matter of course. They may object: ‘We agree that man could see a starry night that way, but to claim that he ought to, perhaps that he did, once upon a time, and lost the faculty because he ate an apple from a forbidden tree

Mill. It was a battle which took half a century to win, but Mill’s rallying-cry is still impressive: I know there is an obscure feeling, a feeling which is ashamed to express itself openly – as if women had no right to care about anything, except how they may be the most useful servants of some men … This claim to confiscate the whole existence of one half of the species for the supposed convenience of the other appears to me, independently of its injustice, particularly silly.16 He ended on a dark note: I should like to have a return laid before this House of the number of women who are actually beaten to death, kicked to death, or trampled to death by their male protectors; and in an opposite column, the amount of the sentences passed, in those cases where the dastardly criminals did not get off altogether. As the Norton case had made clear thirty years earlier, these cases were not limited to the poorer classes.

After Lincoln became president he campaigned for colonization, and even in the midst of war with the Confederacy found time to work on the project, appointing Rev. James Mitchell as Commissioner of Emigration, in charge of finding a place to which blacks could be sent. On August 14th, 1862, he invited a group of black leaders to the White House to try to persuade them to leave the country, telling them that “there is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us.” He urged them to lead their people to a colonization site in Central America. Lincoln was therefore the first president to invite a delegation of blacks to the White House—and did so to ask them to leave the country. Later that year, in a message to Congress, he argued not just for voluntary colonization but for the forcible removal of free blacks. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, shared these anti-black sentiments: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.” Like Jefferson, he thought whites had a clear destiny: “This whole vast continent is destined to fall under the control of the Anglo-Saxon race—the governing and self-governing race.” Before he became president, James Garfield wrote, “[I have] a strong feeling of repugnance when I think of the negro being made our political equal and I would be glad if they could be colonized, sent to heaven, or got rid of in any decent way . . . .” Theodore Roosevelt blamed Southerners for bringing blacks to America. In 1901 he wrote: “I have not been able to think out any solution to the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent . . . .” As for Indians, he once said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t inquire too closely into the health of the tenth.” William Howard Taft once told a group of black college students, “Your race is adapted to be a race of farmers, first, last, and for all times.” Woodrow Wilson was a confirmed segregationist, and as president of Princeton he refused to admit blacks. He enforced segregation in government offices and was supported in this by Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, who argued that “civilized white men” could not be expected to work with “barbarous black men.” During the presidential campaign of 1912, Wilson took a strong position in favor of excluding Asians: “I stand for the national policy of exclusion. . . . We cannot make a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the Caucasian race. . . . Oriental coolieism will give us another race problem to solve and surely we have had our lesson.” Warren Harding also wanted the races kept separate: “Men of both races [black and white] may well stand uncompromisingly against every suggestion of social equality. This is not a question of social equality, but a question of recognizing a fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference. Racial amalgamation there cannot be.

Date: August 26, 1935 Title: Win House in Wistful Vista Cast: Jim Jordan (Fibber), Marian Jordan (Molly), Harlow Wilcox, Charlie Wilson (Hagglemeyer) Summary: Fibber and Molly win their dream house when the ticket they hold in a real estate raffle (number 131313) is selected.

If the Democratic Party has any leadership at all, they should dedicate themselves to narrowing the field, fast, and pushing the lower-tier also-rans into Senate, governorship, and house races as quickly as possible. The field remained so large in late 2019 it became a running joke.

But if he really knows where they are,” Buster countered, “he’ll be suspicious of us showing up out of the blue. I’ve never met him and you haven’t seen him in twenty years or so. He’ll know we’re after our parents. That’s why we have to rough him up a little.” “No,” Annie said emphatically. “We cannot beat up a ninety-year-old man.” “Rough him up,” Buster said, correcting her. “Just get up in his business and make him see that we’re not playing around.” “Just, okay, just try to think of something else,” Annie said. “How about this? One of us talks to him, keeps him busy. The other one pretends to use the restroom and then starts searching the house for clues. If we find something, then we’ve got him nailed. He’ll have to play ball with us.” “That’s not bad,” Buster admitted. “I like that.” “Poor guy won’t even know what hit him,” Annie said.

Donald Ray sliced his hand open with a knife during a demonstration in a drunk woman’s house and the splash of blood kept the Fangs from nodding off. The movie was so low-budget, Mr. Fang wondered if the actor who played Donald Ray had actually cut open his hand for the scene. He felt his estimation of the actor rise considerably. “Here it comes,” Annie whispered, turning to her parents. “This is me.” Donald Ray, his hand wrapped in a makeshift bandage, picked up the hotel phone and made a collect call to his family back in Little Rock. As the phone rang, tinny and soft in the receiver, the film jumped to Donald Ray’s home, the telephone shrilly ringing on the coffee table. As the camera pulled back, a woman leaned over to answer the phone. She listened for a few seconds and then said that she’d accept the charges. “Donald Ray,” she finally said, both angry and relieved to hear from him. “Look real close,” Annie said. Behind Donald Ray’s wife, sitting on the floor and staring dully at the carpet, was Annie. “That’s you,” Buster said. “Watch now,” Annie said. “This is my big moment.” The Fangs watched their daughter on the big screen, her face empty of expression, seemingly unaware of the conversation going on beside her. It was, the Fangs would later admit, a fairly compelling performance. Then, suddenly, so fast that you would miss it if you weren’t looking, Annie looked toward the camera and smiled. The Fangs could not believe it had happened, the moment so jarring and unsettling that it took them a few seconds to realize what they had just seen. Annie had smiled at the camera. Her teeth bared. Fanged. “Annie?” Mr. and Mrs. Fang said at once. In the seat next to them, Annie was smiling, beaming, the scene ended, her character not to return for the rest of the movie. She was, the Fangs now understood, a star. Chapter Five Annie needed to get out of town. Three days after her disastrous interview,

After thirty minutes, he began to wonder if Annie had simply forgotten about him, returned to the house after the movie, and got drunk on vodka tonics. “Come get me,” Buster whispered, hoping to create a psychic link to his sister.

wake up now. Wake up and get out of the house. Run. NOW.” Shooting bolt upright, Rebecca gasped awake. All was black around her, lit only by the faintest sliver of moonlight through a gap in the curtains. Breath coming in short gasps; she tried to breathe, to swallow. She heard the familiar creak of the wooden floorboards outside her bedroom door. Eyes wide and heart pounding, she slid out of bed. The words from her dream thundered through her brain “—get out of the house. Run. NOW.” Moving quickly in a half-crouch, she crossed to the window.

A second famous person became involved with the Manson Family around the spring of 1968. Two of the Manson girls, Patricia and Ella Jo, were hitch-hiking on the Pacific Coast Highway when Beach Boy Dennis Wilson picked them up and invited them to his house. The girls complied, and after spending an afternoon with Dennis, they returned to Manson and told him about their famous new friend. Over subsequent days, Manson managed to worm his way into Dennis’ life, taking advantage of his extreme generosity to move his family into Dennis’ house. Manson also hoped that Dennis would be able to help him boost his music career, a dream Manson had never let go. But any opportunities Dennis threw Manson’s way, he squandered. It became clear to anyone with musical training that Manson could only play a few chords on his guitar and none of his songs were good enough to record. After a few months, Dennis was desperate to part ways with Manson and even moved out of his own home, leaving his landlord to deal with evicting the Manson Family.

The “Hands up, don’t shoot” tale has been dismantled to a point where even the left-leaning Washington Post added it to its annual list of shame, “The biggest Pinocchios of 2015”: “This phrase became a rallying cry for protests after the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old by a white police officer, Darren Wilson. Witness accounts spread after the shooting that Michael Brown had his hands raised in surrender, mouthing the words “Don’t shoot” as his last words before being shot execution-style. Democratic lawmakers raised their hands in solidarity on the House floor. But various investigations concluded this did not happen — and that Wilson acted out of self-defense and was justified in killing Brown

popularity with the voters. Had he bowed out, the White House might well have passed to a Republican in 1944. During a brief home leave, his son Franklin told him that everyone in the armed forces would think the President a “quitter” if he retired. Roosevelt expected that if he ran, it would be a close race. He had asked Americans for the most extreme sacrifices, and knew that they might yearn, as in 1920, for normalcy. As Suckley recorded, Franklin remembered Wilson telling him that the public was “willing to be ‘liberal’ about a third of the time, gets tired of new things and reverts to conservatism the other two thirds of the time.” Recent military successes in Europe and the Pacific might cause some voters to conclude that the war was virtually won, and that they therefore could afford to take a chance with the untested Republican nominee, New York Governor Thomas Dewey. With his booming voice, Dewey told convention delegates that Roosevelt’s government had “grown old in office” and “become

ago so Dad had these workmen come to retile it. They put the ladder up and forgot to take it away again. Lots of green moss has grown back on the roof now, which makes it very soft and comfortable, like a green carpet. I like to sit with my legs swinging down, peering out over next-door’s garden. Not number four next door, where Cecy lives. I mean number eight the other side of us – the sad house. Old Mrs Burton lives there. At least I think she does. No one’s seen her for years and years. She used to be this perfectly ordinary old lady when Mr Burton was still around. They invited Clover and me in for tea several times, after Mum died. We didn’t really like to go, because we didn’t know what to say to them and there was nothing very much to do. Mrs Burton had a collection of little china pots with painted lids and she let us look at each one, but we weren’t allowed to touch because they were precious and we were only little. The tea was very strange too. We had to drink out of cups on saucers, whereas we were used to mugs, so we found it difficult. Then there was a plate of thin bread and butter to eat. Not even any jam. Just a piece of bread and butter. Mrs Burton said if we ate it all up we would be allowed cakes. So we chewed valiantly and then Mr Burton went into the kitchen and came back with a small plate of little iced cakes. He called them fancies. There were two yellow and two pink. I chose yellow and Mrs Burton and Mr Burton took the pink ones. I saw Clover’s face. I knew just how much she wanted a pink one too. She didn’t eat her yellow one properly; she just bit all the icing off the top and licked the little bit of cream inside. Mr and Mrs Burton weren’t cross with her. They shook their heads and patted her curls and said she was a lovely little girlie. ‘A real Goldilocks,’ said Mr Burton. They

If Wilson and his government would not be turned from his end even by the prospect of peace, they would hardly be turned by a virus. And the reluctance, inability, or outright refusal of the American government to shift targets would contribute to the killing. Wilson took no public note of the disease, and the thrust of the government was not diverted. The relief effort for influenza victims would find no assistance in the Food Administration or the Fuel Administration or the Railroad Administration. From neither the White House nor any other senior administration post would there come any leadership, any attempt to set priorities, any attempt to coordinate activities, any attempt to deliver resources.

We know that letting our children eat too many sweets makes us a bad parent, hence the pointless ritual at Halloween when parents allow their children to go from house to house accumulating a big haul of treats, only to confiscate them at the end of the night, because they don’t want their child to get cavities. Yes despite their anxiety about sweets, parents will happily feed their children highly sweetened sports bars, fruit snacks and cereals which are sweets in all but name.

They were brought across an ocean, chained in the hulls of 350-ton vessels. In the southern part of the United States, they were made to labor in the vast agricultural plantations. They made do without surnames and lived in dirt-floor cabins. They labored without pay. They were bought and sold and traded for money and gold and diamonds and molasses and horses and cows. They were fed the barest of subsistence diets. When they tried to escape, they were tracked down by men on horseback. They existed as an appendage to the body of society. They had no moral personality and no moral status in civic or church law . . . After 200-odd years, as a political expediency, they were granted freedom from being the property of other men. During the next hundred years they were disenfranchised, their houses were burned, they were hung from trees, forced into separate and inferior houses, schools and public facilities. They were granted status in law and denied it in practice.18

Wilson was born in the South but became president of Princeton University and then New Jersey governor. He declared that “adventurers swarmed out of the north as much the enemies of one race as the other to cozen, beguile and use the Negroes.…The white men were roused by a mere instinct of selfpreservation—until, at last, there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the south, to protect the southern land.” Wilson, at a private showing of The Birth of a Nation in the White House, allegedly declared it “true history.

Kathleen takes my picture. She emails it to me later. I look ridiculous with the orange Buff pulled up over my head. We say goodbye and I continue walking past fields of swathed canola. Houses stand beyond them. I’m walking the interface between the country and the city: a shallow space, with fields butting up against houses, industry and agriculture commingled. The stubble is a rusty colour. Crispy blue J Cloth towels, scraps of sky, are caught in the roadside weeds.

Kathleen takes my picture. She emails it to me later. I look ridiculous with the orange Buff pulled up over my head. We say goodbye and I continue walking past fields of swathed canola. Houses stand beyond them. I’m walking the interface between the country and the city: a shallow space, with fields butting up against houses, industry and agriculture commingled. The stubble is a rusty colour. Crispy blue J Cloth towels, scraps of sky, are caught in the roadside weeds.

My eyes catch his in the mirror and he whispers, “It’s always been for you.” “The house?” He snorts and shakes his head. “Everything, Charmer. You think you aren’t under my skin, in the memory of my muscles, the marrow of my very bones?” I’m completely shell shocked. Is he admitting he already loves me? Or that he always has?

a woman whose husband is always away on business goes out at night to meet a lover. A known madman is on the loose. At the end of the evening the woman asks her lover to escort her home in case the madman appears. The lover refuses. The woman goes to a friend’s house nearby and asks her friend to walk with her; hearing the reason why the woman is out so late, the friend refuses. The woman goes on alone. At the river separating her neighborhood from her lover’s, she asks a ferryman to take her across. Because she has no money to pay him, the ferryman refuses. As a result, the woman is trapped on the wrong side of the river and killed by the madman. “Who,” said the principal, her eyes twinkling, “is responsible for her death? Rank the characters by the order of their guilt.

Wilson was eight years old when Lincoln died; while he was growing up, the occupants of the White House were Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, and Chester Arthur. It was the high tide of congressional power. Yet even as he completed his treatise, Grover Cleveland won the 1884

No man should tout he’s the head of his house, when he is rarely there to help make it a home. Zaddiyq AriYah

The servants of the upper classes were witnesses to the unbridged gulf between the upper class of that century and the rest of the world. Living in their country seats and their vast London houses, they never consorted with the middle classes. Their servants, too, existed in this bubble, detached from the world where people went to offices or factories to earn money, travelled on the newly invented trains or on horse-drawn omnibuses and lived in overcrowded rented rooms, with shared outdoor lavatories and very little running water, even for the more genteel types of folk. The servants of the upper class were often confused into supposing that they too were gentlefolk, or if not actual gentlefolk, more like them than they were like the majority of their fellow citizens, who were seen from carriage windows or glimpsed in the street, but never known.

For most of us, though, the food memories that really matter go much further back. You may not be able to remember what you had for lunch last Tuesday, but I bet you can recall the habitual meals of childhood; the breakfast you were given for a weekend treat and the way bread tasted in your house. These are the memories that still have emotional force years or even decades later.

As his biographer put it, “[Bill Wilson] was compulsive, given to emotional extremes. . . . Even after he stopped drinking, he was still a heavy consumer of cigarettes and coffee. He had a sweet tooth, a large appetite for sex, and a major enthusiasm for LSD and, later, for niacin, a B-complex vitamin.” Indeed, he was such a heavy smoker that the effects of tobacco would rob him of his mobility and, eventually, his life. One account recalls that he continued to smoke even in his old age when he needed frequent doses of oxygen just to make it through the day. Friends who arrived at the house reported seeing him struggling to decide whether he should take oxygen or smoke another cigarette. The cigarette won every time. A similar pattern arose around a different behavior: serial adultery. Wilson’s need to sleep with women outside his marriage was legendary—so much so that AA members eventually put together a “Founder’s Watch” committee designed to steer him away from any tempting young women at the numerous events he attended.

In a celebrated case a Mrs Butler, who lived in Ireland, dreamt repeatedly of ‘the most enchanting house I ever saw’. She and her husband decided to move to England and inspected many properties around London. One day they went to look at a house in Hampshire and Mrs Butler recognized it as her dream house. She was so familiar with it that she was able to show the housekeeper around the premises and describe every room before they entered it. The price of the house was absurdly low, and when they went to see the agent he told them why. ‘The house is haunted.’ But, he added, ‘you need not be concerned. You are the ghost.’ He had recognized her from the owner’s precise description.

In The House of the Dead, Dostoevsky gives accounts of the criminals he met in Siberia; and there is about all these men, mostly murderers, that slight element of the more-than-human that instantly grips the reader’s interest (in contrast with the all-too-human characters of most modern novelists, who produce acute intellectual constipation after fifty pages). At the same time, the criminal, in choosing crime (if he chooses it, and doesn’t just drift into it from laziness), has made the voluntary descent into the dark world which places him a step nearer the resolution of good and evil that the saint achieves. Salvation through sin recurs constantly in Dostoevsky’s work.

Plotinus (A.D. 205–270) was not a Christian, but his influence on Christian mystics was enormous; he compared human beings to the choir standing around a choir master but with their attention distracted by things going on about them, so they fail to sing in tune or in time. He held that creation was a series of steps leading away from the One (or God); he called those steps emanations. (The Kabbalists later borrowed his ideas, as William Blake was to borrow from the Kabbalah.) This is definitely a non-Christian view, for Plotinus’s evil is a negative thing, depending upon how many steps you have taken away from the One; it is like someone walking away from a lighted house at night, moving further into the darkness of the garden. But why should people walk away, unless tempted by the Devil? Because, says Plotinus, we are empty-headed, and easily distracted. The philosopher is the man who determinedly ignores distractions and multiplicity, and tries to see back towards the One. ‘Such,’ he concludes, ‘is the life of gods and of godlike men; a liberation from all earthly bonds, a life that takes no pleasure in earthly things, a flight of the alone to the alone.

I’m Nancy Wilson. I’m with a band called Heart. We, uh, we’re from Seattle.” There was no recognition on these guys' faces. I might as well have told them we were the Von Trapps. But they had some pot. “Hey, little lady, want some?” one old guy asked. “Okay, if you insist, just a tiny bit,” I said. I hadn’t had pot for ages, and this was some mellow stuff, like sixties pot. It was exactly the right kind. Suddenly, I was loose and free. I went into the house, and there were a slew of guitars in the center of the room. Our road manager Bill Cracknell told me later that Tony Brown always wanted his parties to turn into jam sessions, but they rarely did. I’ve never seen a guitar I didn’t want to play. I picked one up, and started into Elton John’s “Country Comfort.” My pot-smoking friends joined in, and so did my sister. I started walking with the guitar, and gesturing to everyone to “come on.” Sheryl Crow grabbed a guitar; George Strait, too. Soon enough it was a superstar jam session with Vince Gill, Clint Black, Michelle Branch, Reba McIntire, and many more. I love hootenannies, but this was one of the best.