The Voice Over Practice Script Library

Maybe we should never have ventured out into space. Our race has but two basic, innate fears; noise, and the fear of falling. Those terrible heights—Why should any man in his right mind let himself be placed where he could fall…and fall…and fall—But all spacemen are crazy. Everyone knows that.

The Medicos had been very kind, he supposed. “You’re lucky. You want to remember that old fellow. You’re still young and your retired pay relieves you of all worry about your future. You’ve got both arms and legs and are in fine shape.”
“Fine shape!” His voice was unintentionally contemptuous. “No, I mean it,” the chief psychiatrist had persisted gently. “The little quirk you have does you no harm at all—except that you can’t go out into space again. I can’t honestly call acrophobia a neurosis; fear of falling is normal and sane. You’ve just got it a little more strongly than most—but that is not abnormal, in view of what you have been through.
The reminder sent him to shaking again. He closed his eyes and saw the stars wheeling below him again. He was falling…falling endlessly. The psychiatrist’s voice came back through to him and pulled him back. “Steady old man! Look around you.”
“Sorry.”
“Not at all. Now tell me, what do you plan to do?”
“I don’t know. Get a job I suppose.”
“The company will give you a job, you know.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to hang around a spaceport. Wear a little button in his shirt to show the was once a man, be addressed by a courtesy title of captain, claim the privileges of the pilot’s lounge on the basis of what he used to be, hear the shop talk die down whenever he approached a group, wonder what they were saying behind his back—no thank you!
“I think you’re wise. Best to make a clean break, for a while at least, until you are feeling better.”
“You think I’ll get over it?”
The psychiatrist pursed his lips. “Possible. It’s functional you know. No Trauma.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“I didn’t say that. I honestly don’t know. We still know very little about what makes a man tick.”
“I see. Well I might as well be leaving.”
The psychiatrist stood up and shoved out his hand.
“Holler if you want anything. And comeback to see us in any case.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re going to be all right. I know it.”
But the psychiatrist shook his head as his patient walked out. The man did not walk like a spaceman. The easy, animal self-confidence was gone.
Only a small part of Great New York was roofed over in those days; he stayed underground until he was in that section, then sought out a passageway lined with bachelor rooms. He stuck a coin in the slot of the first one which displayed a lighted “vacant” sign, chucked his jump bag inside, and left. The monitor at the intersection gave him the address of the nearest placement office. He went there, seated himself at an interview desk, stamped in his finger prints, and started filling out forms. It gave him a curious back-to-the beginning feeling; he had not looked for a job since pre-cadet days.
He left filling in his name to the last and hesitated even then. He had had more than his bellyful of publicity; he did not want to be recognized; he certainly did not want to be throbbed over—and most of all he did not want anyone telling him he was a hero. Presently he printed in the name “William Saunders” and dropped the forms in the slot.
He was well into his third cigarette and getting ready to strike another when the screen in front of him at last lighted up. He found himself staring at a nice-looking brunette. “Mr. Saunders,” the image said, “will you come inside please? Door seventeen.”
The brunette in person was there to offer him a seat and a cigarette. “Make yourself comfortable Mr. Saunders. I’m Miss Joyce. I’d like to talk with you about your application.”
He settled himself and waited, without speaking.
When she saw that he did not intend to speak, she added, “Now take this name “William Saunders” which you have given us—we know who you are, of course, from your prints.”
“I suppose so.”
“Of course I know what everybody knows about you, but your action in calling yourself “William Saunders,” Mr.—“
“Saunders”
“—Mr. Saunders, caused me to query the files.” She held up a microfilm spool, turned so that he might read his own name on it. “I know quite a bit about you now—more than the public knows, and more than you saw fit to put into your application. It’s a good record, Mr. Saunders.”
“Thank you.”
“But I can't use it in placing you in a job. I can't even refer to it if you insist on designating yourself as Saunders.”
“The name is Saunders. His voice was flat, rather than emphatic.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time, Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions.

Becky DeGeorge, in the bloom of her first full day as Michael's wife, walked out of the hotel lobby holding her husband's hand. She breathed in the cool night air, the first fresh air she had inhaled all day. In the brief span of their marriage, she and Michael had made love several times and taken two steamy showers together. They had poked their heads out for an obligatory but, at last, final brunt with the families. They had begged

off the trip to Opus One, scurried back upstairs, and popped a last bottle of champagne. Michael had put on a sex video and as they watched the film they played out some unusual and exciting roles. He seemed to have fantasies about wearing women's clothes.

It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.

My mother’s hands are veiny and strong. Her neck has veins. Her back has freckles. She used to do a trick where it looked like she would be pulling off her thumb, when in fact she was not. Do you know this trick? Part of one’s right thumb is made to look like part of one’s left hand and then is slid up and down the index finger of the left finger – attached then detached. It’s an unsettling trick and more so when my mother used to do it because she did it in a way where her hands sort of shook, vibrated, her necks veins protruding with the strain plausibly attendant to pulling off one’s finger. As children we watched with both glee and terror.

Maybe feeling my hands on her face would make her understand what I was trying to say to her. But as I moved toward her, I could see in her eyes that nothing I said was going to change anything. I left them at the table and went back home to my room.

I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be. Still, I was there. I was there as much as anyone else was there. Either I sat behnd my aunt and his godmother or I sat beside them. Both are large women, but his godmother is larger. She is of average height, five four, five five, but weighs nearly two hundred pounds. Once she and my aunt had found their places--two rows behind the table where he sat with he sat with his court-appointed attorney--his godmother became as immobile as a great stone or as one of our oak or cypress stumps. She never got up once to go get water or go to the bathroom down in the basement. She just sat there staring at the boy’s clean-cropped head where he sat at the front table with his lawyer. Even after he had gone to await the jurors’ verdict, her eyes remained in that one direction. She heard nothing said in that courtroom. Not by the prosecutor, not by the defense attorney, not by my aunt. (Oh, yes, she did hear one word-one word, for sure: “hog.”)

My present to Helen at the time of our marriage was a modest gold watch, and this had depleted my capital to the extent that a bank statement at the commencement of our married life revealed the sum of 25 shillings standing to my credit. Admittedly, I was a partner now, but when you start from scratch, it takes a long time to get your head above water. But we did need the essentials, like a table, chairs, cutlery, crockery, the odd rug and carpet, and Helen and I decided that it would be most sensible to pick up these things at house sales.

An adaptation from, Would like to meet. A story by Karen Holmes...

When the chicken attacked her, ripping four inches of fabric out of her best trousers, she knew it was time to start telling the truth.

As the bird's beak made contact with the seat of her pants. she let out an ear-piercing scream. The chicken's owner Graham, was a step or two in front of her. He spun round alarmingly, "Hillary!" he shouted, "what happend? Are you OK?

Her name was Laura, Hillary is the offending chicken.
Graham pushed her aside in his haste to offer her comfort. He picked up the evil-eyed fowl and cradled her in his arms. "Poor baby!" he crooned. Then he looked at her accusingly. "You must be carful," he said. "She's a Copper Neck Maran. Hilary's French and very sensitive. Loud noises can put her off laying." "But she bit me!" wailed Laura. "Nonsense" retorted Graham. "There isn't a vicious bone in her body." There wouldn't be any bones in her body if I had my way, she thought to herself. She'd be reduced to chickent stock.

“Hey, Hickie!” I called, seeing his head bobbing up from under the surface. “You wanna die of pneumonia, you found the right way to do it!” He gave me a grin, showing a big gap in his front teeth what had been left by two cops. “What’re ya thayin’, Thtevie?” he answered, his s’s getting lost in the gap. “Ith a perfeck day for a thwim!”

“Come on out,” I answered. “I got a business proposition for you!” Whipping his black hair back on his head, he began to swim expertly, over to where I was sitting. “there’th thwimmin’, and then there’th buthineth,” he said, shooting up out of the water in a pale white flash and running over to his little pile of clothes. He dried himself off with a rag that might’ve been a towel once, then got dressed in a hurry.

"How’ve you been, Thtevie? I ain’t theed you around for a bit.”

“Ain’t been around,” I said, noticing that hickie’s voice had gotten lower. He was probably a year or two older than me, but small for his age. "Workin’. The legitimate life, you know, it tends to keep you busy.”

“And becauth of that, I thtay away from it,” Hickie said, now covered up in an old shirt, wool trousers, and suspenders. He pulled on a beat-up pair of shoes and shook hands with me, then slipped a miner’s cap onto his head so that it slouched over one eye. “If I couldn’t walk away for a thwim whenever I felt the urge, I wouldn’t thee the thenth in life. Whath on your mind, old thon?”

If you haven't read it, Angel of Darkness is set in NYC and upstate NY in the 1890's. The two boys are tough street kids who've become quite savvy at fending for themselves at a tough time and place. Stevie is black and Hickie is white. I'll let you take it from there.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Joan Murdoch helped me fill out the application. When we finished, I told her that if I were half as gifted as all my teachers raved I was, I had a shot. She agreed. Once Grandma Lil discovered she would still be my legal guardian and that my going away would not jeopardize her monthly income from the City of New York, she signed her name to my application in the rounded, overlarge letters of the semiliterate.

"What's the matter?" St. Nicholas asked "Oh, St. Nicholas," Harim said. "We aren't important enough for such a big occasion. Last year the Archangel made Heaven sparkle with gold and silver." "And the year before, the Heavenly Choir made Christmas with harps and trumpets, and hundreds of voices singing in a magnificent chorus. What could we do that would be good enough?" asked Petra, the Music Angel.

Battle of Brazitos
Dec. 25, 1846 Col. Alexander Doniphan & 500 Soldiers.... confronted 1,200 Mexican Dragoons camped at Brazito, near Vado, NM.
The exhausted and demoralized Mexicans had stopped to rest and celebrate Christmas.
But, their celebration was cut short.....,when Mexican sentries seeing large dust clouds, assumed Doniphan cavalry reinforcements were coming from the north to join him.
When in reality, it was a large herd of sheep and supply wagons following behind Doniphan’s Troops.
Mexicans were so intimidated by the thought of more soldiers... that the battle lasted only 30 mins and Mexican survivors fled back to Chiuhaha....barely stopping long enough in El Paso del Norte for provisions.
More history, next time, on El Paso History Moments. I’m Melissa Sargent for the El Paso County Historical Commission.

Happy Holidays from El Paso History Moments
Sargent Home and Business Inventory services, El Paso Gold History videos and the Leon Metz Radio Show.

There is a place beyond the top of the world
It sits patiently, waiting for lovers to unfold
Their hearts are drawn to this place, like rivers to the sea
Like the beams of sunlight seeking around the shadows
Of the vapor lifting into clouds that form letters of love
For the earthly longings to view from below.

There is a place I met you, and joined you.
And stopped for a brief moment in time to consider
the nature of where we were and are.
It is the mystery of you and me. The knowledge that falling
in was easy and out is not an option.
For the place was waiting, and whispering for us to come home.

Here beyond the top of the world.

And up here in the clear air, wisps of other lovers
Drift by our smiling faces, wondering and knowing
What took so long,
We were born together, in love, holding fast through time
and circumstance, knowing that we would someday dance

In this place beyond the top of the world.

And while we rest in arms foretold, we look below
the mountains, the hills, the rivers from whence we came
Forgetting nothing, needing nothing but you in me and i in you.
And only a butterfly was allowed to trace our journey

To this place beyond the top of the world.

Maggie and Ira Goldstein had to go to a funeral in Pennsylvania. Maggie’s girlhood friend had lost her husband. Deerlick lay on a narrow country road some 90 miles north of Baltimore, and the funeral was scheduled for 10:30 Saturday morning, so Ira figured they should start around 8. This made him grumpy. He was not an early morning kind of man. Also, Saturday was his busiest day at work, and he had no one to cover for him. Also, their car was in the body shop. It had needed extensive repairs, and Saturday morning at opening time, 8 o’clock exactly, was the soonest they could get it back. Maybe they’d just better not go, but Maggie said they had to, for she and Serena had been friends forever ... or nearly forever ...

Maggie and Ira Goldstein had to go to a funeral in Pennsylvania. Maggie’s girlhood friend had lost her husband. Deerlick lay on a narrow country road some 90 miles north of Baltimore, and the funeral was scheduled for 10:30 Saturday morning, so Ira figured they should start around 8. This made him grumpy. He was not an early morning kind of man. Also, Saturday was his busiest day at work, and he had no one to cover for him. Also, their car was in the body shop. It had needed extensive repairs, and Saturday morning at opening time, 8 o’clock exactly, was the soonest they could get it back. Maybe they’d just better not go, but Maggie said they had to, for she and Serena had been friends forever ... or nearly forever ...

Of course, Bridget had lots of art supplies, but her most important art supply wasn't something to draw or paint with. It was a hat. Not just any old hat, but a big black beret. The kind of hat that lots of Great Artists wear. Before Bridget made any kind of art, she'd put on her beret and adjust it until it looked just right. It had to have that certain je ne sais quoi. She had no idea what that meant, but she knew all Great Artists needed it to make art.

It was getting very late now, and , really I had to be going,but just as I was heading out the door I happened to gaze into one final display case, over to the side there, tellingly spotlit, lay the actual solitary remains of a 'real human horn, an incurled calcified protrusion (20cm long and between 1 and 3 cm in diameter) sawed off the skull of an un-named twenty-seven-yr old woman in the middle of the last century, by on S. Beaus MD.
It turns out that human horns, anomalous growths consisting entirely of concentric layers of keratinized epidermal cells with a tendency to originate on the sites of sebaceous cysts,warts or scars , are more frequent than ordinarily supposed. Perhaps the most famous case in the early nineteenth century was that of the Parisian Madame Dimanche , "the Widow Sunday" whose horn grew outward from her forehead and then down ten inches past her nose . Almost to her chin. According to Monestiere,"one day at the age of 84 she decided to have it cut off, because she did not want to meet her Maker wearing what she had begun to consider a Satanic ornament. She survived the operation and lived another 7 years.Mutter himself included a spooky wax cast of Madame Dimanche's face and horn among his collections , although, there is some indication that several versions of the cast were in relatively common circulation at the time.

In the Brazilian film "Central Station", Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people. Suddenly, she has an opportunity to pocket $1,000. All she has to do is persuade a homeless 9 year old boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.) She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set, and settles down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted _ he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation. Perhaps Dora knew this all along, but after her neighbor’s plain speaking, she spends a troubled night. In the morning Dora resolves to take the boy back.

Suppose Dora had told her neighbor that it is a tough world, other people have nice new TVs too, and if selling the kid is the only way she can get one, well he was only a street kid. She then have become, in the eyes of the audience a monster. She reems herself only by being prepared to bear considerable risk to save the boy.

A bloated vampire moon drained all life and color from the world. The snow-covered land came speeding past the train. It was gray and ill-defined, marked only by a few livid cottages and limitless black forest grizzled with snow. No roads; the railway did not follow any road, it cut through the land like a knife.

It is late September 2008 and I'm standing in the lobby of a Manila hotel where I'm attending a meeting about occupational health, safety, and environmental issues for workers throughout Asia. On a television screen nearby, polar bears are diving off a small ice floe. Later in the day, I visit the National Museum of the Philippines where we tour an exhibit of prize winners in a 2007 Filipino art competition. One of the paintings shows a woman clad in a dress constructed of images of cars and smokestacks. She has her hands over her eyes in a gesture of despair and is up to her hips in water. In this tropical island nation, merely 15 degrees north of the equator, where many people live on the water's edge, disappearing polar bear habitat--a sign of global warming and harbinger of rising sea levels--has local relevance. Over the next several days I meet people who work in factories that make clothing, electronics, machinery, and other products. When asked to name their top concerns about their working conditions, leading the list are the impacts of chemicals to reproductive health and the health of future generations. When asked what they would do to improve workplace safety, all say, "Remove the chemical hazard. Substitute something safer."

This is, in essence, the story this book explores. Over the past century our reliance on petroleum and coal has made available a vast quantity of hydrocarbons. These byproducts of fuel refining have become the foundation for the overwhelming majority of our synthetic materials--manufactured substances that go into everything from computers to cosmetics. We've managed to create tens of thousands of such new materials--substances that exist nowhere in nature--and these materials now permeate every aspect of our lives. They have made possible the creation of countless useful and often ingenious products: the lightweight, shatter-proof, flame-resistant plastics used in electronics, aircrafts, sports gear, and motor vehicles; waterproof coatings for textiles; flexible plastics that go into medical tubing and children's toys; nonstick surfaces for food packaging; thin films that enable microchip etching; and polymers delicate enough to coat an eyelash, to name but a few. It's hard to imagine life without them. These materials were designed to make life easier, more efficient, more convenient, and in many ways, safer. And many do.

But many of these substances also behave in ways that make them hazardous to human health and the environment. A number of these synthetic chemicals, scientists are discovering, are capable of interfering with the biological mechanisms that determine the health of any living organism. These materials, it turns out, have been changing the world's chemistry, in some instances altering the most fundamental building blocks of life on earth. As a result, the entire chemistry of the planet--from the cellular level to entire ecosystems--is now different than at any other time in history.

“If you were a genuine Army Colonel” Pilgrim said, “instead of one of the most bogus and unconvincing frauds I’ve ever seen, you’d rate three stars for this. Excellently done, my dear Fawcett, excellently done.”

Pilgrim was the great-grandson of an English peer of the realm and it showed. Both in dress and in speech he was slightly foppish and distinctly Edwardian; subconsciously, almost, one looked for the missing monocle, the old Etonian tie. His exquisitely cut suits came from Savile Row, his shirts from Turnbull and Asher and his pair of matched shotguns, which at four thousand dollars he regarded as cheap at the price, came, inevitably, from Purdeys of the West End. The shoes, regrettably, were hand-made in Rome. To have him auditioned for the screen part of Sherlock Holmes would have been superfluous.

Fawcett did not react to the criticism, the praise or the under-stated sartorial splendor. His facial muscles seldom reacted to anything---which may have been due to the fact that his unlined face was so plump it was almost moon-shaped. His bucolic expression verged upon the bemused: large numbers of people languishing behind Federal bars had been heard to testify, frequently and with understandable bitterness, that the impression Fawcett conveyed was deceptive to the point of downright immorality.

Phoenix Arizona, the Dallas of the Desert
A sprawling concrete jungle in the heart of the America Southwest
A suburbuan wonderland for wealthy retirees, realstate tycoons, and groves of the new world roish.

Its the type of town where everyone is a new comer, thousands of people move to Phoenix each year.

Some of them come searching for the American Dream, the rest are there trying to exploit it.

For the people of the Sun Valley the name of the game is and has always been "Survival of the Fittest"and that attitude has worked.

The towns economy from its biggest retirement community to its lowliest pawnshop has been booming since 1970s.

But the towns success has come at a price. A price that on new years eve in 1980 was paid in blood.

When a successful buisness man and his family were gunned down in their home, and the dead would not be the only victims of the horrible crime.

p. 45

After months of very little repose, my wife and I grew irritable, barking at each other about everything from whose turn it was to sing, “I See the Moon” to our daughter at 3am to who – in our sleepwalking states, had placed the baby monitor in the fridge next to the long-forgotten bottle of white wine. We bought a crib from a couple we knew and tried to relocate our daughter from our bed into the new digs, but as soon as she saw her new gated community of one, she wailed like a banshee. Since my wife and I were both sleepy and cowardly, we moved her back in with us.

“Mamaaaaa,” our daughter yelled. We crouched down even lower, as if she had one of those thermal-imaging machines the cops use to see through the walls of homes rented by violent felons. She abandoned what little speech she possessed and regressed to primal screams and cries, the kind we hadn’t heard for months. Below the wails, we listened to her rattle the bars of her wooden cage. My wife, eyes closed, whispered softly to herself. Even though she was raised Catholic among Mormons in Utah, my wife is usually not someone who speaks freely to the Lord.

“Should I pray, too?” I asked her in what I believed what a spousal bonding moment.

She opened her eyes. “Pray? I’m swearing, you idiot,” she said, and I could recognize the mother tongue clearly now.

I stood in the shadows of a deserted shop front across from The Blood and Brew Pub, trying not to be obvious as I tugged my black leather pants back up where they belonged. This is pathetic, I thought, eyeing the rain-emptied street. I was way too good for this. Apprehending unlicensed and black-art witches was my usual line of work, as it takes a witch to catch a witch. But the streets were quieter than usual this week. Everyone who could make it was at the West Coast for our yearly convention, leaving me with this gem of a run. A simple snag and drag. It was just the luck of the Turn that had put me here in the dark and rain. “Who am I kidding?” I whispered, pulling the strap of my bag farther up my shoulder. I hadn’t been sent to tag a witch in a month: unlicensed, white, dark, or otherwise. Bringing in the Mayor’s son for wereing outside of a full moon probably hadn’t been the best idea. A sleek car turned the corner, looking black in the buzz of the mercury streetlamp. This was the third time around the block for it. A grimace tightened my face as it approached, slowing. “Damn it,” I whispered. “I need a darker door front.” “He thinks you’re a hooker, Rachel,” my backup snickered into my ear. “I told you the red halter was slutty.” “Anyone ever tell you that you smell like a drunk bat, Jenks?” I muttered, my lips barely moving. Backup was unsettlingly close tonight, having perched himself on my earring. Big dangling thing—the earring, not the pixy. I’d found Jenks to be a pretentious snot with a bad attitude and a temper to match. But he knew what side of the garden his nectar came from. And apparently pixies were the best they’d let me take out since the frog incident. I would have sworn fairies were too big to fit into their mouths.

One evening, a platoon of soldiers arrived at a small village after a long hike. The next morning, being Sunday, several of the men went to church. A sergeant commanded the boys to kneel and after the chaplain had read the prayer, the text was taken up next. Those who had prayer books took them out, but this one soldier had only a deck of cards. So he spread them out. The Sergeant saw the cards and said, “Soldier, put away those cards!” After the services were over, the soldier was brought before the provost marshal. The marshal said, “Sergeant, why have you brought this man here?” “And what have you to say for yourself, son?” “Much sir,” replied the soldier. The marshal said, “I hope so, for if not, I will punish you quite severely.”

A great bat came flapping into the room. It drove the weird women away. Poor Renfield fell down, fainting from fright. In an instant, the bat disappeared. In its place was the smiling figure of Count Dracula! He was ready to claim his victim! Once bitten by the vampire, Renfield became Dracula’s slave. The evil Count wanted to go to England. Coffins, filled with Transylvanian earth, were taken to a ship and loaded on board. One of the coffins contained something else as well as dirt. Renfield guarded it well. When the ship landed in England, the horrified people at the dock found that the entire crew was dead. Only Renfield, now a raving madman, was left alive.

There’s Gold in them thar hills!

January 24, 1848 Gold is discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California and the rush is on. People with “Gold Fever” from around the world head to California’s Mother Lode and have to pass right through El Paso on their way.

El Paso, known as Franklin then, was the midpoint and the southern most snow free route through the Rocky Mountains and offered gold seekers year round passage to California.

They came at first in a few pack trains, and then a large wave of gold seekers. Franklin was just a sleepy little border town and the supplies were low initially and then was overrun with as many as 4,000 travelers in 1500 wagons perched at the edge of the Rio Grande.

But, some very savvy business people saw a “Bonanza” that could be made right here from the gold seekers. Businesses started to spring up in Franklin. The following year Ft. Bliss was established and there was no turning back and soon Franklin grew into El Paso!

More El Paso History Moments next time, El Paso History Moments. I’m Melissa Sargent for the El Paso County Historical Commission.

A belief is a lever that once pulled moves everything else in a person's life. Are you a scientist? A liberal? A racist? These are merely species of belief in action. Your beliefs define your vision of the world: they dictate your behaviour : they determine your emotional responses to other human beings. If you doubt this, consider how your experience would suddenly change if you came to believe one of the following propositions:

1 You have only two weeeks to live.
2 You've just won a lottery prize of one hundred million dollars
3 Aliens have implanted a receiver in your skull and are manipulating your thoughts.

These are mere words - until you believe them. Once believed , they become part of the very apparatus of your mind, determining your desires, fears, expectations, and subsequent behaviour.

There seems, however, to be a problem with some of our most cherished beliefs about the world: they are leading us, inexorably, to kill one another. A glance at history, or at the pages of any newspaper, reveals that ideas which divide one group of human beings from another, only to unite them in slaughter, generally have their roots in religion. It seems that if our species ever eradicates itself through war, it will not be because it was written in the stars but because it was written in our books; it is what we do with words like "God" and "paradise" and "sin" in the present that will determine our future.

Our situation is this; most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book. We have the misfortune of having many such books on hand ,each making an exclusive claim as to its infallibility. People tend to organise themselves into factions according to which of these incompatible claims they accept.Each of these texts urges its readers to adopt a variety of beliefs and practices some of which are benign and others are not.

“Excerpt”
Sophie’s Choice – by William Styron

Chapter One

In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn. This was 1947, and one of the pleasant features of that summer which I so vividly remember was the weather, which was sunny and mild, flower-fragrant, almost as if the days had been arrested in a seemingly perpetual springtime. I was grateful for that if for nothing else, since my youth, I felt, was at its lowest ebb. At twenty-two, struggling to become some kind of writer, I found that the creative heat which at eighteen had nearly consumed me with its gorgeous, relentless flame had flickered out to a dim pilot light registering little more than a token glow in my breast, or wherever my hungriest aspirations once resided. It was not that I no longer wanted to write, I still yearned passionately to produce the novel which had been for so long captive in my brain. It was only that, having written down the first few fine paragraphs, I could not produce any others, or - to approximate Gertrude Stein’s remark about a lesser writer of the Lost Generation - I had the syrup but it wouldn’t pour. To make matters worse, I was out of a job and had very little money and was self-exiled to Flatbush - like others of my countrymen, another lean and lonesome young Southerner wandering among the Kingdom of the Jews.

When music plays, we hear the melody, forgetting that it is only one of the modes of time; when the orchestra falls silent, we hear time; time itself. I was living in a pause. Not in an orchestra's general pause (whose length is clearly determined by a specific sign in the musical score), but in a pause without a determined end. We could not (as they did in other units) shave slivers off a tailor's measure to show the two-year stint shrinking day by day: men with black insignia could be kept on indefinitely. Forty-year-old Ambroz from the Second Company was in his fourth year.

Someone coming toward her. It was going to happen again. Helpless. Helpless. Helpless. The scream that tore from Melis's throat jarred her awake. She jerked upright in bed. She was shaking, her T-shirt soaked with sweat.

Only a dream. She wasn't helpless. She'd never be helpless again. She was strong now.

Spring 1944
Chapter 1
Grace Gillian kneels before her hyacinth bed, her bare fingers raking the accumulation of decaying leaves from around the plants. She has long since shucked off her gardening gloves. She loves the feel of the earth’s awakening, the humid, fertile smell of it.

Grace is thirty-eight years old. Slender. High cheekbones. Generous mouth. Dark brown hair, almost auburn with the russet highlights around her face. But it is her eyes, soft gray eyes tilting up at the corners, that one remembers. When she reads a poem she loves or when a student makes a perceptive comment, her face lights up and her eyes become radiantly blue. But she does not know she is beautiful. And, although her name is Grace, neither does she think of herself at all, it is in sensible, nearly mundane terms—teacher, gardener, friend. But she is neither sensible nor mundane. And on this day, as she rakes the sodden leaves from the hyacinth bed, she is thinking of John, whom she loves beyond telling. My true, pure love. A love not fueled by desire. This is what she believes. She feels she has long since turned away from desire.

The pecan trees, arching high over her and over her tourquoise-colored house, have not yet leafed out. Nor has the elm by the front door. But the magnificent live oak is in full leaf. And a single wild plum and a domestic peach in the northwest corner of her garden are dizzily in bloom, infusing the blue air and the yellow grass with the colors and scents of spring.

A song from the kitchen radio drifts out into her garden. “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,” Jo Stafford sings tenderly. Since the War, all the songs are heartrendering to Grace. Looking closely at the hyacinth buds, she can faintly discern the color—purple or white—each will become. Colors of the mourning.

She, Grace, although not in mourning, is deeply sad. Anna, her next-door neighbor, is sick. Sick to death. When she thinks it again, sick to death, the phrase takes on its literal meaning. Anna is sick, and in a day or two she will go to her death. And then John will leave. He has told her this. “If something happens to Anna”—IF not WHEN said carefully—“I’m going to get into this War.” Raising an eyebrow, he smiled. “I’ll probably end up with a desk job. But if they’ll have me, I’m going.” Remembering, her eyes fill, and she sits back on her heel and with the sleeve of her sweater wipes the perspiration and tears from her face.

Willi McCoy had been a jerk before he died. His being dead didn't change that. He sat across from me, wearing a loud plaid sport jacket. The polyester pants were primary Crayola green. His short, black hair was slicked back from a thin, triangular face. He had always reminded me of a bit player from a gangster movie. The kind that sells information, runs errands, and is expendable.
Of course now that Willie was a vampire, the expendable part didn't count anymore. But he was still selling information and running errands. No, death hadn't changing him much. Bu just in case, I avoided looking directly into his eyes. It was standard policy for dealing with vampires. He was a slime bucket, but now he was an undead slime bucket. It was a new category for me.

Heart Shaped Box - Chapter One
Jude had a private collection.

He had framed sketches of the Seven Dwarfs on the wall of his studio, in between his platinum records. John Wayne Gacy had drawn them while he was in jail and sent them to him. Gacy liked golden-age Disney almost as much as he liked molesting little kids; almost as much as he liked Jude's albums.

Jude had the skull of a peasant who had been trepanned in the sixteenth century, to let the demons out. He kept a collection of pens jammed into the hole in the center of the cranium.

He had a three-hundred-year-old confession, signed by a witch. "I did spake with a black dogge who sayd hee wouldst poison cows, drive horses mad and sicken children for me if I wouldst let him have my soule, and I sayd aye, and after did give him sucke at my breast." She was burned to death.

He had a stiff and worn noose that had been used to hang a man in England at the turn of the century, Aleister Crowley's childhood chessboard, and a snuff film. Of all the items in Jude's collection, this last was the thing he felt most uncomfortable about possessing. It had come to him by way of a police officer, a man who had worked security at some shows in L.A. The cop had said the video was diseased. He said it with some enthusiasm. Jude had watched it and felt that he was right. It was diseased. It had also, in an indirect way, helped hasten the end of Jude's marriage. Still he held onto it.

Many of the objects in his private collection of the grotesque and the bizarre were gifts sent to him by his fans. It was rare for him to actually buy something for the collection himself. But when Danny Wooten, his personal assistant, told him there was a ghost for sale on the Internet, and asked did he want to buy it, Jude didn't even need to think. It was like going out to eat, hearing the special, and deciding you wanted it without even looking at the menu. Some impulses required no consideration.

Danny's office occupied a relatively new addition, extending from the northeastern end of Jude's rambling, 110-year-old farmhouse. With its climate control, OfficeMax furniture, and coffee-and-cream industrial carpet, the office was coolly impersonal, nothing at all like the rest of the house. It might have been a dentist's waiting room, if not for the concert posters in stainless-steel frames. One of them showed a jar crammed with staring eyeballs, bloody knots of nerves dangling from the backs of them. That was for the All Eyes On You tour.
No sooner had the addition been built than Jude had come to regret it. He had not wanted to drive forty minutes from Piecliff to a rented office in Poughkeepsie to see to his business, but that would've probably been preferable to having Danny Wooten right here at the house. Here Danny and Danny's work were too close. When Jude was in the kitchen, he could hear the phones ringing in there, both of the office lines going off at once sometimes, and the sound was maddening to him. He had not recorded an album in years, had hardly worked since Jerome and Dizzy had died (and the band with them), but still the phones rang and rang. He felt crowded by the steady parade of petitioners for his time, and by the never-ending accumulation of legal and professional demands, agreements and contracts, promotions and appearances, the work of Judas Coyne Incorporated, which was never done, always ongoing. When he was home, he wanted to be himself, not a trademark.

Laurent saw the barrel of the gun coming up, felt the madman tense against her. He was trying to lift her up with him as he shot Nicholas. Then she heard the screech of tires on the gravel outside the door. Was it Tommy? Oh, God no. Whoever came through the doorway was going to get killed.

The vast lands of the west attracted pioneers who brought new techniques of agriculture. People everywhere needed the products and services of an educated industrial nation. By 1870, there were 563 colleges and universities in the United States. By 1910, almost a thousand. The tradition of literacy established among colonial Americans raced to keep pace with the dynamics of progress. The teaching of science and engineering gave the nation vital technological ability.

The Century of Change is the story of Americans who combined their native skills with the growing torrent of new knowledge to improve the quality of life for themselves and their children. Like the sewing machine, countless other inventions and techniques appeared to help this determination become a reality. The story is not a routine report of smooth progress toward the perfection of life. There have been hardships, yes -- even injustice among Americans. The balance between laws and social progress is the critical element in George Washington’s “Great Experiment.” It is the people -- each new generation of Americans -- who must improve and maintain this balance within their Constitution.

Stanley was not a bad kid. He was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. He’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather! He smiled. It was family joke. Whenever anything went wrong, they always blamed Stanley’s no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!

Supposedly, he had a great-great-grandfather who had stolen a pig from a one-legged Gypsy, and she put a curse on him and all his descendants. Stanley and his parents didn’t believe in curses, of course, but whenever anything went wrong, it felt good to be able to blame someone. Things went wrong a lot. They always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“When you’ve finished reading this book you probably won’t HAVE all the skills needed to compete with professional voice-overs; that takes months, even years of practice. But you’ll KNOW what those skills ARE, and when you do practice you’ll know what you should be doing. More importantly, you’ll know what you SHOULDN’T be doing. That’s vital. Practice alone won’t accomplish much unless you know WHAT to practice. Practicing the WRONG things will certainly not lead to improvement. It will only serve to ingrain any bad habits you may already have. Study the principles outlined in this book, and you will have the foundation upon which to build your ability to take a piece of commercial copy, analyze it, wring as much meaning out of it as possible, and convey that meaning to a listener with naturalness, sincerity and believability.
“There is no single correct way to read a given piece of commercial copy. Each voice-over person will have a different way to approach the same spot. But there are a lot of universal rules that they all will follow. This book will tell you what these rules are and show you how to apply them.”

Why do we call it rush hour when no one goes anywhere? Like rush hour takes only one hour. Maybe we should have a slow hour -- 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. except weekends.
Last week, I merged into traffic so hairy that people were actually backing off the freeway. And while I, myself, suffer from gridlock claustrophobia, once you're physically on the freeway ... that's pretty much a done deal. Do not pass Go; do not collect $200.
"Freeway." Good place for a "rush hour." The only difference between a freeway and side streets is that the streets have a fast lane -- for bicyclists. I've sat on the 101 so long that we could have used a Las Vegas yo-yo girl...
"Cigarettes? Soda? Candy?"
For those of you in the market, these conga-line cars are the same ones that advertise "freeway miles only." So it goes.
Problem with gridlock is that people are overheating. Road rage is worst in Arizona, which is -- coincidentally, I'm sure -- the hottest place to live outside the surface of the sun. I've never understood why people move to Arizona. They always say the same thing: "My home was so cheap." Yes, but when you walk outside, YOU'RE IN ARIZONA.
I myself don't carry a car gun, but I can see it. Once you've breathed someone's fumes for an hour, you start to wonder why they're out in the first place. Is their reason good enough? During "rush hour," traffic should be limited to women whose water has broken. And me.
While awaiting legislation, we could phase in car horns that reflect varying degrees of emotion. The first horn will be polite, as in, "Hellooo? Excuse me." The second will be more condescending like a foghorn. "Jaaack-hole." Then, when someone really gets in our grill, we pull the chord and release the flatulent cargo vessel "HOOOOONK."
Or maybe we'll go with car-tones to match our cell phone ringtones. I've always wanted a horn on the back of my car to play this riff from C&C Music Factory: "Chill, baby, baby, baby, chill, baby, wait."
The point is that that something must be done to relieve gridlock tedium before we all go Arizonan. People everywhere are coming home and collapsing by their spouses...

“In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists... and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews... and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists... and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics... but I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.”

Man: Will you embrace the timelessness of now,
before it disappears into the world?
Woman: I will
Man: Before this moment melts into tomorrow.
Woman: I will
Man: Will you hold me?
Woman: Yes
Man: Will you?
Woman: Yes
Man: Stay here inside our love lined with arms that won't let go,
Woman: You know I will.
Man: With you in between the risk of letting go and the firm hold of forever.
Woman: I will
Man: Will you talk with me?
Woman: Yes
Man: Will you?
Woman: Yes
Man: Can you kiss my lips while we speak of nothing that needs to be said,
Woman: Yes
Man: everything we will.
Woman:Yes we will.
Man: Will you stay?
Woman: Yes
Man:Will you?
Woman: I will

BC Bumpus written Nov. 2010

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of a rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods. The truck was suddenly surrounded by field of monuments and cenotaphs of kindred design and striking size, all guarding the privileged dead. But the truck moved on and the limits of mere privilege became visible, for here now came the acres of truly prestigious death: captains of life without diamonds, furs, carriages and limousines, but buried in pomp and glory, vaulted in great tombs built like heavenly safety deposit boxes, or parts of the Acropolis. And ah yes, here too, inevitably, came the flowing masses, row upon row of them under simple headstones and crosses. Here was the neighborhood of the Phelans.

Francis’s mother twitched nervously in her grave as the truck carried him nearer to her; and Francis’s father lit his pipe, smiled at his wife’s discomfort, and looked out from his own bit of sod to catch a glimpse of how much his son had changed since the train accident.

In the ancient Cheddar Gorge of Somerset in England, there is a huge cavern. Since it was first discovered more than a century ago it has yielded many rare artifacts and bones from the ancient past, including even a complete seated skeleton, nine thousand years old. But in 1950 this place, named "Gough's Cave" after the Victorian sea captain who found it, also yielded what is perhaps the oldest piece of traded gem-type material ever discovered. It is dark red and rather dirty, like a scuffed piece of translucent toffee, and it is almost the size of a dozen credit cards stacked together. It is a piece of amber and it was traded at least 12,500 years ago. It looks an unlikely treasure, but treasure it is because it is possibly the first indication we have today of a human fascination with amber that has lasted since prehistoric times.

At the time of its discovery there was no way to ascertain where the amber in Gough's Cave had come from--whether from Britain (some rare pieces of native amber had been found on the Isle of Wight) or farther afield. However, fourteen years later a professor at Vassar College in New York came up with the answer. Using dental equipment designed for tooth fillings, he ground up a tiny fragment of the amber, and then observed how it absorbed infrared light. He determined that it was of Baltic origin and was therefore around forty million years old.

The velociraptor sniffed. It jerked it's head, and looked right at Tim; Tim nearly gasped with fright. Tim’s body was rigid, tense. He watched as the reptile eye moved, scanning the room. Another sniff. Tim thought, Lex please don’t move, please don’t move, whatever you do, please don’t ... The velociraptor sniffed the steak, and moved on.

The velociraptor sniffed. It jerked it's head, and looked right at Tim; Tim nearly gasped with fright. Tim’s body was rigid, tense. He watched as the reptile eye moved, scanning the room. Another sniff. Tim thought, Lex please don’t move, please don’t move, whatever you do, please don’t ... The velociraptor sniffed the steak, and moved on.

The velociraptor sniffed. It jerked its head, and looked right at Tim; Tim nearly gasped with fright. Tim’s body was rigid, tense. He watched as the reptile eye moved, scanning the room. Another sniff. He’s got me, Tim thought. Then the head jerked back to look forward, and the animal went on, toward the fifth steak. Tim thought, Lex please don’t move, please don’t move, whatever you do, please don’t ... The velociraptor sniffed the steak, and moved on. It was now at the open door to the freezer. Tim could see the smoke billowing out, curling along the floor toward the animal’s feet. One big clawed foot lifted, then came down again, silently. The dinosaur hesitated. Too cold, Tim thought.

My dear mother, I am very sorry to tell you that it will not be in our power to keep our promise of spending the holiday with you, and we are prevented that happiness by a circumstance which is not likely to make us any amends. Lady Susan in a letter to her brother, has declared her intention to visiting us almost immediately, and as such a visit is in all probability merely an affair of convenience, it is impossible to conjecture its length. I was by no means prepared for such an event, nor can I now account for her Ladyship’s conduct. Langford appeared so exactly the place for her in every respect, as well from the elegant and expensive stile of living there.

I first laid eyes on Lake Superior and the big country around it more than a decade ago. I drowned myself in its pleasures: fishing for trout, hunting for mushrooms, picking berries in its pine-scented air. On my frequent returns to the lake country, I have been heartened to find that it remains as I first knew it, uncommonly clear, still heavily forested, and bathed in exquisite stillness. You can hear a lynx scream, follow the tracks of wolves hunting deer, or sail along rock-strewn beaches without seeing a soul. And you may be awakened in the night, as I was in my sleeping bed, by a woodland caribou...

They returned to Yonville along the river. The summer weather had reduced its flow and left uncovered the river walls and water steps of the gardens along its bank. It ran silently, swift and cold-looking; long fine grasses bent with the current, like masses of loose green hair streaming in its limpid depths. Here and there on the tip of a reed or on a water-lily pad a spidery-legged insect was poised or crawling. Sunbeams pierced the little blue air bubbles that kept forming and breaking on the ripples; branchless old willows mirrored their gray bark in the water in the distance the meadows seemed empty all around them.

At the sudden impact of those words, crashing into her mind like a leaden bullet into a silver dish, Emma felt herself shudder; and she raised her head, straining to understand what he had meant by them. They looked at each other in silence, almost wonderstruck, each of them, to see that the other was there, so far apart had their thoughts carried them. Charles stared at her with the clouded gaze of a drunken man; motionless in his chair, he was listening to the screams that continued to come from the hotel.

Welcome to the wonderful, lucrative, challenging, and creative world of voice-overs.
If you’re reading this book, you’ve probably listened to voice-overs on television commercials or heard announcers or actors on radio spots and thought to yourself, “I could do that.”
Maybe you’ve even looked at some magazine advertisements and tried reading the text of the ad—what we call the copy—aloud. If you have, you’re already on the right track for the commercial voice-over world. Just being aware of the marketplace and listening to the different voice-overs styles used in various ad campaigns can help you begin to understand the nature of the business.
Voice-over work has become an extremely popular option for people considering what to do for a living. (Know many other jobs where you can make six figures and not have to dress up?) In fact, doing voice-overs has become such a popular career choice that many professionals in other fields have turned their part-time dabbling in voice-overs into full-time careers. (A doctor friend of mine recently gave up his medical practice because he made more money, and spent less time working, by doing voice-overs.) Yet as rewarding as this career can be, it’s also very challenging—and it can be tough to break into. Trying to make a go of it in voice-overs isn’t a decision you should make lightly. After all, doing voice-overs means doing a kind of acting. You can have a wonderful speaking voice, but succeeding in voice-overs requires you to know how to apply that God-given talent in professional situations.

Introduction
Welcome to the wonderful, lucrative, challenging, and creative world of voice-overs.
If you’re reading this book, you’ve probably listened to voice-overs on television commercials or heard announcers or actors on radio spots and thought to yourself, “I could do that.”
Maybe you’ve even looked at some magazine advertisements and tried reading the text of the ad—what we call the copy—aloud. If you have, you’re already on the right track for the commercial voice-over world. Just being aware of the marketplace and listening to the different voice-overs styles used in various ad campaigns can help you begin to understand the nature of the business.
Voice-over work has become an extremely popular option for people considering what to do for a living. (Know many other jobs where you can make six figures and not have to dress up?) In fact, doing voice-overs has become such a popular career choice that many professionals in other fields have turned their part-time dabbling in voice-overs into full-time careers. (A doctor friend of mine recently gave up his medical practice because he made more money, and spent less time working, by doing voice-overs.) Yet as rewarding as this career can be, it’s also very challenging—and it can be tough to break into. Trying to make a go of it in voice-overs isn’t a decision you should make lightly. After all, doing voice-overs means doing a kind of acting. You can have a wonderful speaking voice, but succeeding in voice-overs requires you to know how to apply that God-given talent in professional situations.

Day after day I see Americans - of every race, religion, nationality, and point of view - trying to resolve their differences in the courtroom. It has not always been so. In earlier times, both here and abroad, individuals and communities settled their differences not in courtrooms under law but on the streets with violence. We Americans treasure the customs and institutions that have helped us find the better way. And we not only hope but also believe that in the future we will continue to resolve disputes under law, just as surely as we will continue to hold elections for president and Congress. Our beliefs reflect the strength of our Constitution and the institutions it has created.

The Constitution’s form and language have helped it endure. The document is short - seven articles and twenty-seven amendments. It focuses primarily on our government’s structure. Its provisions form a simple coherent whole, permitting readers without technical knowledge to understand the document and the government it creates. And it traces the government’s authority directly to a single source of legitimizing power - “We the People.”

In the valley of Nis the accursed waning moon shines thinly, tearing a path for its light with feeble horns through the lethal foliage of a great upas-tree.

And within the depths of the valley, where the light reaches not, move forms not meant to be beheld. Rank is the herbage on each slope, where evil vines and creeping plants crawl amidst the stones of ruined palaces, twining tightly about broken columns and strange monoliths, and heaving up marble pavements laid by forgotten hands.

And in trees that grow gigantic in crumbling courtyards leap little apes, while in and out of deep treasure-vaults writhe poison serpents and scaly things without a name.

Vast are the stones which sleep beneath coverlets of dank moss, and mighty were the walls from which they fell. For all time did their builders erect them, and in sooth they yet serve nobly, for beneath them the grey toad makes his habitation.

At the very bottom of the valley lies the river Than, whose waters are slimy and filled with weeds. From hidden springs it rises, and to subterranean grottoes it flows, so that the Daemon of the Valley knows not why its waters are red, nor whither they are bound.

The Genie that haunts the moonbeams spake to the Daemon of the Valley, saying, "I am old, and forget much. Tell me the deeds and aspect and name of them who built these things of Stone."

And the Daemon replied, "I am Memory, and am wise in lore of the past, but I too am old. These beings were like the waters of the river Than, not to be understood. Their deeds I recall not, for they were but of the moment. Their aspect I recall dimly, it was like to that of the little apes in the trees. Their name I recall clearly, for it rhymed with that of the river. These beings of yesterday were called Man."

So the Genie flew back to the thin horned moon, and the Daemon looked intently at a little ape in a tree that grew in a crumbling courtyard.

There is a feeling of absolute finality about the end of a flight through darkness. The whole scheme of things with which you have lived acutely, during hours of roaring sound in an element altogether detached from the world, ceases abruptly. The plane noses groundward, the wings strain to the firmer cushion of earthbound air, wheels touch, and the engine sighs into silence. The dream of flight is suddenly gone before the mundane realities of growing grass and swirling dust, the slow plodding of men and the enduring patience of rooted trees. Freedom escapes you again, and wings that were a moment ago no less than an eagle's, and swifter, are metal and wood once more, inert and heavy.

God took the strength of a mountain, the majesty of a tree, the warmth of a summer sun, the calm of a quiet sea, the generous soul of nature, the comforting arm of night, the wisdom of the ages, the power of the eagle's flight, the joy of a morning in spring, the faith of a mustard seed, the patience of eternity, the depth of a family's need. Then God combined these qualities. When there was nothing more to add, He knew his masterpiece complete. And so he called it "Mom and Dad".

Monster by Jonathan Kellerman

Chapter 11
William Swig said, "you think that means something?"

It was just after four P.M. and we were back in his office, Milo's unmarked was low on gas, so he left it at the park and I drove to Starkweather.

On the way, he made two calls on the cell phone. An attempt to reach the sheriff of Treadway, California, resulted in a rerouting to the voicemail system of a private security firm named Bunker Protection. Put on hold for several minutes, he finally got through. The brief conversation left him shaking his head.

"Gone," he said.

"The Sheriff?"

"The whole damn town. It's a retirement community now, called Fairway Ranch. Bunker does the policing. I talked to some robocop with an attitude: 'All questions of that nature must be referred to national headquarters in Chicago.' "

The call to Swig connected, but when we arrived at the hospital's front gate, the guard hadn't been informed. Phoning Swig's office again finally got us in, but we had to wait awhile before Frank Dollard showed up to walk us across the yard. This time he barely greeted us. Impending evening hadn't tamed the heat. Only three men were out on the yard, one of them Chet, waiving his huge hands wildly as he told stories to the sky.

The moment we passed through the end gate, Dollard stepped away and left us to enter the gray building alone. Swig was waiting just inside the door. He hurried us in to his office.

Now he tented his hands and rocked in his desk chair. "A box, eyes - this is obviously psychotic rambling. Why do you take it seriously, Doctor?"

"Even psychotics can have something to say," I said.

"Can they? I can't say I've found that to be the case."

"Maybe it's no big deal, sir," said Milo, "but it does bear follow-up."

Notes: A "Drabble" is a story of exactly 100 words - I wrote this for my writers Meetup group in 2008. Enjoy!

- Muddyshoes

--------------

With trembling hands, the tiny old man leaned forward, despite the pain in his back, and kissed the still-warm and wrinkled cheek of the woman, with whom for many years, he would dance on the weekends. His hands, twisted like the tiny branches of an ancient gnarled oak, stopped their shaking as he rested them gently upon the hands of his wife, which were also, tiny and twisted. His eyes, red and very tired, searched desperately for any sign of life. And as he quietly whispered one final ‘I Love You,” a single tear fell upon her wrinkled lips.

Even in these enlightened days when women are CEOs and Cabinet Members, many still feel uncomfortable with blatant displays of power. Women are often afraid to ask for what they want because they tend to confuse assertion with aggression. Aggression implies violation. When you act aggressively, the other person will feel angry or taken advantage of. Assertion, on the other hand, means going after what you want without demeaning or intimidating the other person.

I listened, but if a wolf was broadcasting from those hills he was not on my wavelength. George, who had been sleeping on the crest of the esker, suddenly sat up, cocked his ears forward and pointed his long muzzle toward the north. After a minute or two he threw back his head and howled; a long, quavering howl which started low and ended on the highest note my ears would register. Ootek grabbed my arm and broke into a delighted grin. “Caribou are coming; the wolf says so!”

Of Mice and Men
George came quietly out of the brush.
George said quietly, “What the hell you yellin’ about?”
Lennie got up on his knees.
“You ain’t gonna leave me, are ya, George? I know you ain’t.”
George came stiffly near and sat down beside him. “No.”
“I knowed it,” Lennie cried. “You ain’t that kind.”
George was silent.
Lennie said, “George.”
“Yeah?”
“I done another bad thing.”
“It don’t make no difference,” George said, and he fell silent again.
Only the topmost ridges were in the sun now.
The shadow in the valley was blue and soft.
From the distance came the sound of men shouting to one another.
George turn his head and listened to the shouts.
Lennie said, “George.”
“Yeah?”
Ain’t you gonna give me hell?”
“Give ya hell?”
“Sure, like you always done before.
Like ‘If I di’n’t have you I’d take my fifty bucks –‘”
“Jesus Christ, Lennie! You can’t remember nothing that happens,
But you remember ever’ word I say.”
“Well, ain’t you gonna say it?”
George shook himself.
He said woodenly,
“If I was alone I could live so easy.”
His voice was monotonous, had no emphasis.
“I could get a job an’ not have no mess.”
He stopped.
“Go on,” said Lennie.
“An’ when the enda the month come--.”
“An’ when the enda the month come I could take my fifty bucks an’ go to a… cathouse…” He stopped again.
Lennie looked eagerly at him. “Go on George. Ain’t you gonna give me no more hell?”
“No” said George.
“Well, I can go away,” said Lennie.
“I’ll go right off in the hills an’ find a cave if you don’ want me.”
George shook himself again.
“No,” he said.
“I want you to stay with me here.”
Lennie said craftily --- “Tell me like you done before.”
“Tell you what?”
“ ‘Bout the other guys an’ about us.”
George said.
“Guys like us got no family. They make a little stake an’ then blow it in. They ain’t got nobody in the worl’ that give a hoot in hell about ‘em—“
“But not us,” Lennie cried happily. “Tell about us now.”
George was quiet for a moment. “But not us,” he said.
“Because –“
“Because I got you an’ --- “
“An’ I got you. We got each other, that’s what, that gives a hoot in hell about us,” Lennie cried in triumph.
The little evening breeze blew over the clearing and the leaves rustled and the wind waves flowed up the green pool. And the shouts of men sounded again, this time much closer than before.
George took off his hat.
He said shakily,
“Take off your hat, Lennie . The air feels fine.”
Lennie removed his hat dutifully and laid it on the ground in front of him. The shadow in the valley was bluer, and the evening came fast. On the wind the sound of crashing through the brush came to them.
Lennie said, “Tell how it’s gonna be.”
George had been listening to the distant sounds.
For the moment he was business-like.
“Look acrost the river, Lennie, an I’ll tell you so you can almost see it.”
Lennie turned his head and looked off across the pool and up the darkening slopes of the Gabilans.
“We gonna get a little place,” George began. He reached in his side pocket and brought out Carlson’s Luger; he snapped off the safety, and the hand and gun lay on the ground behind Lennie’s back. He looked at the back of Lennie’s head, at the place where the spine and skull were joined.
A man’s voice called from up the river, and another man answered.
“Go on,” said Lennie.
George raised the gun and his hand shook, and he dropped his hand to the ground again.
“Go on,” said Lennie.
“How’s it gonna be? We gonna get a little place.”

“We’ll have a cow,” said George.
“An’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens….
an’ down on the flat we’ll have a….
little piece of alfalfa—“
“For the Rabbits.” Lennie shouted.
“For the Rabbits.” George repeated.
“And I get to tend the rabbits.”
“An’ you get to tend the rabbits.”
Lennie giggled with happiness.
“An’ live on the fatta the lan’.”
“Yes.”
Lennie turned his head.
“No, Lennie. Look down there acrost the river, like you can almost see the place.”
Lennie obeyed him. George looked down at the gun.
There were crashing footsteps in the brush now. George turned and looked toward them.
“Go on, George. When we gonna do it?”
“Gonna do it soon.”
“Me an’ you.”
“You…. an’ me. Ever’body gonna be nice to you. Ain’t gonna be no more trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from ‘em.”
Lennie said, “I thought you was mad at me, George.”
“No,” said George. “No Lennie. I ain’t mad. I never been mad, an I ain’t now. That’s the thing I want you to know.”
The voices came close now. George raised the gun and listened to the voices.
Lennie begged, “Le’s do it now. Le’s get that place now.”
“Sure, right now. I gotta. We gotta.”
And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger.
The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering. George shivered and looked at the gun, and then he threw it from him, back up on the bank, by the old pile of ashes.
The brush seemed filled with cries and with the sound of running feet.
Slim’s voice shouted,
“George, where you at, George?”
But George sat stiffly on the bank and looked at his hand that had thrown the gun away. The group burst into the clearing, and Curly was ahead. He saw Lennie lying on the sand. “Got him, by God.” He went over and looked down at Lennie, and then he looked back at George. “Right in the back of the head,” he said softly.
Slim came directly to George and sat down beside him, sat very close to him.
“Never you mind,” said Slim. “A guy gotta sometimes.”
But Carlson was standing over George. “How’d you do it?” he asked.
“I just done it.” George said tiredly.
“Did he have my gun?”
“Yeah, He had your gun.”
“An’ you got it away from him and you took it an’ killed him?”
“Yeah, tha’s how.” George’s voice was almost a whisper. He looked steadily at his right hand that had held the gun.
Slim twitched George’s elbow.
“Come on, George. Me an’ you’ll go in an’ get a drink.”
George let himself be helped to his feet. “Yeah, a drink.”
Slim said, “You hadda, George. I swear you hadda. Come on with me.
He led George to entrance of the trail and up toward the highway.
Curly and Carlson looked after them. And Carlson said,
“Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin’ them two guys?”

THERE ARE SOME men who enter a woman’s life and screw
it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me—not forever,
but periodically.
Morelli and I were both born and raised in a blue-collar
chunk of Trenton called the Burg. Houses were attached
and narrow. Yards were small. Cars were American. The
people were mostly of Italian descent, with enough Hungarians
and Germans thrown in to offset inbreeding. It was
a good place to buy calzone or play the numbers. And, if
you had to live in Trenton anyway, it was an okay place to
raise a family.
When I was a kid I didn’t ordinarily play with Joseph
Morelli. He lived two blocks over and was two years older.
“Stay away from those Morelli boys,” my mother had
warned me. “They’re wild. I hear stories about the things
they do to girls when they get them alone.”
“What kind of things?” I’d eagerly asked.
“You don’t want to know,” my mother had answered.
“Terrible things. Things that aren’t nice.”
From that moment on, I viewed Joseph Morelli with a
combination of terror and prurient curiosity that bordered
on awe. Two weeks later, at the age of six, with quaking
knees and a squishy stomach, I followed Morelli into his
father’s garage on the promise of learning a new game.
The Morelli garage hunkered detached and snubbed at
the edge of their lot. It was a sorry affair, lit by a single
shaft of light filtering through a grime-coated window. Its
air was stagnant, smelling of corner must, discarded tires,
and jugs of used motor oil. Never destined to house the
Morelli cars, the garage served other purposes. Old Man
Morelli used the garage to take his belt to his sons, his sons
used the garage to take their hands to themselves, and
Joseph Morelli took me, Stephanie Plum, to the garage to
play train.
“What’s the name of this game?” I’d asked Joseph
Morelli.
“Choo-choo,” he’d said, down on his hands and knees,
crawling between my legs, his head trapped under my
short pink skirt. “You’re the tunnel, and I’m the train.”
I suppose this tells something about my personality. That I’m not especially good at taking advice. Or that I was
born with an overload of curiosity. Or maybe it’s about rebellion
or boredom or fate. At any rate, it was a one-shot
deal and darn disappointing, since I’d only gotten to be the
tunnel, and I’d really wanted to be the train.

Maybe we should never have ventured out into space. Our race has but two basic, innate fears; noise, and the fear of falling. Those terrible heights—Why should any man in his right mind let himself be placed where he could fall…and fall…and fall—But all spacemen are crazy. Everyone knows that.

The Medicos had been very kind, he supposed. “You’re lucky. You want to remember that old fellow. You’re still young and your retired pay relieves you of all worry about your future. You’ve got both arms and legs and are in fine shape.”
“Fine shape!” His voice was unintentionally contemptuous. “No, I mean it,” the chief psychiatrist had persisted gently. “The little quirk you have does you no harm at all—except that you can’t go out into space again. I can’t honestly call acrophobia a neurosis; fear of falling is normal and sane. You’ve just got it a little more strongly than most—but that is not abnormal, in view of what you have been through.
The reminder sent him to shaking again. He closed his eyes and saw the stars wheeling below him again. He was falling…falling endlessly. The psychiatrist’s voice came back through to him and pulled him back. “Steady old man! Look around you.”
“Sorry.”
“Not at all. Now tell me, what do you plan to do?”
“I don’t know. Get a job I suppose.”
“The company will give you a job, you know.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to hang around a spaceport. Wear a little button in his shirt to show the was once a man, be addressed by a courtesy title of captain, claim the privileges of the pilot’s lounge on the basis of what he used to be, hear the shop talk die down whenever he approached a group, wonder what they were saying behind his back—no thank you!
“I think you’re wise. Best to make a clean break, for a while at least, until you are feeling better.”
“You think I’ll get over it?”
The psychiatrist pursed his lips. “Possible. It’s functional you know. No Trauma.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“I didn’t say that. I honestly don’t know. We still know very little about what makes a man tick.”
“I see. Well I might as well be leaving.”
The psychiatrist stood up and shoved out his hand.
“Holler if you want anything. And comeback to see us in any case.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re going to be all right. I know it.”
But the psychiatrist shook his head as his patient walked out. The man did not walk like a spaceman. The easy, animal self-confidence was gone.
Only a small part of Great New York was roofed over in those days; he stayed underground until he was in that section, then sought out a passageway lined with bachelor rooms. He stuck a coin in the slot of the first one which displayed a lighted “vacant” sign, chucked his jump bag inside, and left. The monitor at the intersection gave him the address of the nearest placement office. He went there, seated himself at an interview desk, stamped in his finger prints, and started filling out forms. It gave him a curious back-to-the beginning feeling; he had not looked for a job since pre-cadet days.
He left filling in his name to the last and hesitated even then. He had had more than his bellyful of publicity; he did not want to be recognized; he certainly did not want to be throbbed over—and most of all he did not want anyone telling him he was a hero. Presently he printed in the name “William Saunders” and dropped the forms in the slot.
He was well into his third cigarette and getting ready to strike another when the screen in front of him at last lighted up. He found himself staring at a nice-looking brunette. “Mr. Saunders,” the image said, “will you come inside please? Door seventeen.”
The brunette in person was there to offer him a seat and a cigarette. “Make yourself comfortable Mr. Saunders. I’m Miss Joyce. I’d like to talk with you about your application.”
He settled himself and waited, without speaking.
When she saw that he did not intend to speak, she added, “Now take this name “William Saunders” which you have given us—we know who you are, of course, from your prints.”
“I suppose so.”
“Of course I know what everybody knows about you, but your action in calling yourself “William Saunders,” Mr.—“
“Saunders”
“—Mr. Saunders, caused me to query the files.” She held up a microfilm spool, turned so that he might read his own name on it. “I know quite a bit about you now—more than the public knows, and more than you saw fit to put into your application. It’s a good record, Mr. Saunders.”
“Thank you.”
“But I can't use it in placing you in a job. I can't even refer to it if you insist on designating yourself as Saunders.”
“The name is Saunders. His voice was flat, rather than emphatic

The small boys came early to the hanging.

It was still dark when the first three or four of them sidled out of the hovels, quiet as cats in their felt boots. A thick layer of fresh snow covered the little town like a new coat of paint, and theirs were the first footprints to blemish its perfect surface. They picked their way through the huddled wooden huts and along the streets of frozen mud to the silent marketplace, where the gallows stood waiting. The boys despised everything their elders valued. They scorned beauty and mocked goodness. They would hoot with laughter at the sight of a cripple, and if they saw a wounded animal they would stone it to death.

Candy
Is Dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.

"Do you have one of those cotton-picking machines?" the pleasant lady asked.

"No," Mrs. Turpin said, "they leave half the cotton in the field. We don't have much cotton anyway. If you want to make it farming now, you have to have a little of everything. We got a couple of acres of cotton and a few hogs and chickens and just enough white-face that Claud can look after them himself.

"One thang I don't want," the white-trash woman said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Hogs. Nasty stinking things, a-gruntin and a-rootin all over the place."

Mrs. Turpin gave her the merest edge of her attention. "Our hogs are not dirty and they don't stink," she said. "They're cleaner than some children I've seen. Their feet never touch the ground. We have a pig-parlor- that's where you raise them on concrete," she explained to the pleasant lady, "and Claud scoots them down with the hose every afternoon and washes off the floor." Cleaner by far than that child right there, she thought. Poor nasty little thing. He had not moved except to put the thumb of his dirty hand into his mouth.

Mrs. Turpin gave her the merest edge of her attention. "Our hogs are not dirty and they don't stink," she said. "They're cleaner than some children I've seen. Their feet never touch the ground. We have a pig-parlor- that's where you raise them on concrete," she explained to the pleasant lady, "and Claud scoots them down with the hose every afternoon and washes off the floor." Cleaner by far than that child right there, she thought. Poor nasty little thing. He had not moved except to put the thumb of his dirty hand into his mouth.

The woman turned her face away from Mrs. Turpin. "I know I wouldn't scoot down no hog with no hose," she said to the wall.

You wouldn't have no hog to scoot down, Mrs. Turpin said to herself.

Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son.

They crossed the country on a rambling southwest line in an old Citroen sedan, keeping mostly in secondary roads, travelling in fits and starts. They stopped in three places along the way before reaching their final destination; first in Rhode Island, where the tall man with the black hair worked in a textile mill; then in Youngstown, Ohio, where he worked for three months on a tractor assembly line and finally in a small California town near the Mexican border, where he pumped gas and worked at repairing small foreign cars with an amount of success that was, to him, surprising and gratifying.

Whereever they stopped, he got a Maine newspaper called the Portland Press-Herald and watched it for items concerning a small southern Maine town named Jerusalem's Lot and the surrounding area. There were such items from time to time.

So your school is having a science fair! Great! The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American school system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you. Ha ha! No, seriously, although a science fair can seem like a big “pain,” it can help you understand important scientific principles, such as Newton’s First Law of Inertia, which states: “A body at rest will remain at rest until 8:45 p.m. The night before the science-fair project is due, at which point the body will come rushing to the body’s parents, who are already in their pajamas, and shout, “I just remembered the science fair is tomorrow and we gotta go to the store right now!”

p. 42

The suit is definitely the universal business outfit for men. There is nothing else that men like to wear when they’re doing business. I don’t know why it projects this image of power. Why is it intimidating?

“We’d better do what this guy says. His pants match his jacket.”

Men love the suit so much, we’ve actually styled our pajamas to look like a tiny suit. Our pajamas have little lapels, little cuffs, simulated breast pocket. Do you need a breast pocket on your pajamas? You put a pen in there, you roll over in the middle of the night, you kill yourself.

p. 70

People will kill each other for a parking space in New York because they think, “If I don’t get this one, I may never get a space. I’ll be searching for months until somebody goes out to the Hamptons.” Because everybody in New York City knows there’s way more cars than parking spaces. You see cars driving in New York all hours of the night. It’s like musical chairs except everybody sat down around 1964.

The problem is, while car manufacturers are building hundreds of thousands of new cars every year, they’re not making any new spaces. That’s what they should be working on. Wouldn’t that be great – you go to the auto show and they’ve got a big revolving turntable with nothing on it.

“New from Chrysler, a space.”

I don’t know how long it had been observing me, but now it peered at me with some alarm. Then the little animal--only slightly larger than a house cat--threw back its head, gave a single, shrill bark, and disappeared in a trot over a ridge. I chased after it over the hummocky tundra, but when I got to the top of the ridge, the fox was nowhere to be seen. The polar desert stretched out for miles in front of me--no trees, no shrubs, no deep valleys, just the gently rolling land, tufts of arctic grasses, and scattered wildflowers. Yet the fox was gone.

The mirror reflects, but does not reveal. The soap washes my hands, but does not cleanse. The water rinses, but does not refresh. I don’t know who I see in the looking glass anymore. The widened eyes are a foreigner’s. My pupils shrink in the fluorescent light. My face is that of someone else. My chest rises and falls in frantic breaths. I can’t feel my arms…except for the burns on my wrists.

“God damn it!” The stranger says. I observe the reflection clutch his wrists while mine remain firmly clamped to the ceramic rim of the sink. My companion frantically rooted around the room beyond the glass and grasped the toilet paper, leaving distinct hand prints on the wall. Dumbly, the stranger wrapped layer after layer around the cuts on his wrists. After seeing the cuts bleed through the layers, the reflection cursed himself, whipping his head to and fro to find a suitable substitute.

My insides burn. Hatred in the color red spreads across my face. I grab the mirror and hurl it into the bathtub. The shattering, while horrifying, soothes the burning in my ears, but not in my face.

When the Franklins came to this country from England, they were Protestants due to the Reformation and continued the rest of their lives here with the Episcopal Church.
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the church. My early readiness in learning to read (which must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read), and the opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin, too, approved of it, and proposed to give me all his short hand volumes of sermons, I suppose as a stock to set up with, if I would learn his character. I continued, however, at the grammar school not quite one year, though in that time I had risen gradually from the middle of the class of that year to be the head of it, and farther was removed into the next class above it, in order to go with that into the third at the end of the year. But my father, in the meantime, from the view of the expense of a college education for so large a family he could not well afford, altered his first intention, took me from the grammar school, and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic, kept by a then famous man, Mr. George Brownell. Under him I acquired fair writing, but failed in the arithmetic.

The first twigs are thin, green, and supple. They bend into a complete circle, but will not break. Their delicate, showy hopefulness shooting from forsythia and lilac bushes meant only change in whipping style. They beat us differently in the spring. Instead of the dull pain of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over. There was a nervous meanness in these long twigs that made us long for the steady stroke of a strap or the firm but honest slap of a hairbrush. Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered ache of switchings, and forsythia holds no cheer.

The first twigs are thin, green, and supple. They bend into a complete circle, but will not break. Their delicate, showy hopefulness shooting from forsythia and lilac bushes meant only a change in whipping style. They beat us differently in the spring. Instead of the dull pain of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over. There was a nervous meanness in these long twigs that made us long for the steady stroke of a strap or the firm but honest slap of a hairbrush. Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered ache of switchings, and forsythia holds no cheer.

Any desire of the heart is there for you to discover and manifest. Whatever inspires you is an aspect of yourself. Be precise about what you admire in someone and find that part in yourself. If you have the aspiration to be something, it's because you have the potential to manifest what you are seeing.

From the spaceport gates, exchanging brief greetings with the guards, I
took a last look at the Kharsa. For a minute I toyed with the notion of
just disappearing down one of those streets. It's not hard to disappear
on Wolf, if you know how. And I knew, or had known once. Loyalty to
Terra? What had Terra given me except a taste of color and adventure,
out there in the Dry-towns, and then taken it away again?

If an Earthman is very lucky and very careful, he lasts about ten years
in Intelligence. I had had two years more than my share. I still knew
enough to leave my Terran identity behind like a worn-out jacket. I
could seek out Rakhal, settle our blood-feud, see Juli again....

How could I see Juli again? As her husband's murderer? No other way.
Blood-feud on Wolf is a terrible and elaborate ritual of the code
duello. And once I stepped outside the borders of Terran law, sooner or
later Rakhal and I would meet. And one of us would die.

I looked back, just once, at the dark rambling streets away from the
square. Then I turned toward the blue-white lights that hurt my eyes,
and the starship that loomed, huge and hateful, before me.

A steward in white took my fingerprint and led me to a coffin-sized
chamber. He brought me coffee and sandwiches--I hadn't, after all, eaten
in the spaceport cafe--then got me into the skyhook and strapped me,
deftly and firmly, into the acceleration cushions, tugging at the
Garensen belts until I ached all over. A long needle went into my
arm--the narcotic that would keep me safely drowsy all through the
terrible tug of interstellar acceleration.

Doors clanged, buzzers vibrated lower down in the ship, men tramped the
corridors calling to one another in the language of the spaceports. I
understood one word in four. I shut my eyes, not caring. At the end of
the trip there would be another star, another world, another language.
Another life.

I had spent all my adult life on Wolf. Juli had been a child under the
red star. But it was a pair of wide crimson eyes and black hair combed
into ringlets like spun black glass that went down with me into the
bottomless pit of sleep....

* * * * *

Someone was shaking me.

"Ah, come on, Cargill. Wake up, man. Shake your boots!"

My mouth, foul-tasting and stiff, fumbled at the shapes of words. "Wha'
happened? Wha' y' want?" My eyes throbbed. When I got them open I saw
two men in black leathers bending over me. We were still inside gravity.

"Get out of the skyhook. You're coming with us."

"Wha'--" Even through the layers of the sedative, that got to me. Only a
criminal, under interstellar law, can be removed from a passage-paid
starship once he has formally checked in on board. I was legally, at
this moment, on my "planet of destination."

"I haven't been charged--"

"Did I say you had?" snapped one man.

"Shut up, he's doped," the other said hurriedly. "Look," he continued,
pronouncing every word loudly and distinctly, "get up now, and come with
us. The co-ordinator will hold up blastoff if we don't get off in three
minutes, and Operations will scream. Come on, please."

Then I was stumbling along the lighted, empty corridor, swaying between
the two men, foggily realizing the crew must think me a fugitive caught
trying to leave the planet.

The locks dilated. A uniformed spaceman watched us, fussily regarding a
chronometer. He fretted. "The dispatcher's office--"

"We're doing the best we can," the Spaceforce man said. "Can you walk,
Cargill?"

I could, though my feet were a little shaky on the ladders. The violet
moonlight had deepened to mauve, and gusty winds spun tendrils of grit
across my face. The Spaceforce men shepherded me, one on either side, to
the gateway.

"What the hell is all this? Is something wrong with my pass?"

The guard shook his head. "How would I know? Magnusson put out the
order, take it up with him."

"Believe me," I muttered, "I will."

They looked at each other. "Hell," said one, "he's not under arrest, we
don't have to haul him around like a convict. Can you walk all right
now, Cargill? You know where the Secret Service office is, don't you?
Floor 38. The Chief wants you, and make it fast."

I knew it made no sense to ask questions, they obviously knew no more
than I did. I asked anyhow.

"Are they holding the ship for me? I'm supposed to be leaving on it."

"Not that one," the guard answered, jerking his head toward the
spaceport. I looked back just in time to see the dust-dimmed ship leap
upward, briefly whitened in the field searchlights, and vanish into the
surging clouds above.

My head was clearing fast, and anger speeded up the process. The HQ
building was empty in the chill silence of just before dawn. I had to
rout out a dozing elevator operator, and as the lift swooped upward my
anger rose with it. I wasn't working for Magnusson any more. What right
had he, or anybody, to grab me off an outbound starship like a criminal?
By the time I barged into his office, I was spoiling for a fight.

Art class was over but Vashti sat glued to her chair. Her paper was empty.
Vashti’s teacher leaed over the blank paper. “Ah! A polar bear in a snowstorm!” she said. “Very funny!”, said Vashti. “I just CAN’T draw!”
Vashti thought for a moment. “Well, maybe I can’t draw, but I CAN sign my name.”

#1: Origin of Space and Time
From Einstein’s work on general relativity came the recognition that there must be an origin for matter and energy. From Penrose, Hawking, and Ellis’ work came the acknowledgement that there must be an origin for space and time, too. With the knowledge that time has a beginning, and a relatively recent beginning, at that, all age-lengthening attempts to push away the creation event, and thus the Creator become absurd. Moreover, the common origin of matter, energy, space, and time proves that the act(s) of creation must transcend the dimensions and substance of the universe -- a powerful argument for the biblical doctrine of a transcendent Creator.

#2: The Earth as a Fit Habitat

About a dozen more parameters, including several atmospheric characteristics, currently are being researched for their sensitivity in the support of life. However, the twenty listed in Table 12.1 in themselves lead safely to the conclusion that much fewer than a trillionth of a percent of all stars will have a planet capable of sustaining advanced life. Considering that the universe contains only about a trillion galaxies, each averaging a hundred billion stars, we can see that not even one planet would be expected, by natural processes alone, to possess the necessary conditions to sustain life. No wonder Robert Rood and James Trefil, among others, have surmised that intelligent physical life exists only on the earth. It seems abundantly clear that the earth, too, in addition to the universe, has experienced divine design.

Mr. Buckstone had reported the bills from his committee, one by one, leaving the bill to the last. When the House had voted upon the acceptance or rejection of the report upon all but it, and the question now being upon its disposal--Mr. Buckstone begged that the House would give its attention to a few remarks which he desired to make. His committee had instructed him to report the bill favorably; he wished to explain the nature of the measure, and thus justify the committee's action; the hostility roused by the press would then disappear, and the bill would shine forth in its true and noble character. He said that its provisions were simple. It incorporated the Knobs Industrial University, locating it in East Tennessee, declaring it open to all persons without distinction of sex, color or religion, and committing its management to a board of perpetual trustees, with power to fill vacancies in their own number. It provided for the erection of certain buildings for the University, dormitories, lecture-halls, museums, libraries, laboratories, work-shops, furnaces, and mills. It provided also for the purchase of sixty-five thousand acres of land, (fully described) for the purposes of the University, in the Knobs of East Tennessee. And it appropriated [blank] dollars for the purchase of the Land, which should be the property of the national trustees in trust for the uses named.

"Freedom is participation in power," said the Roman orator Cicero. By this deep definition, freedom is in short supply for tens of millions of Americans, a scarcity with serious consequences. This absence of freedom breeds apathy. Average citizens do not fight for change, even about the conditions and causes that mean the most to them. Our lack of civic motivation is the greatest problem facing the country today. Our beloved country is being taken apart by large multinational commercial powers. Over two thousand years ago, in ancient Athens, a fledgling democracy challenged the longstanding plutocracy, using politics as it instrument.

A faint interest dawned inside her gaze, as if the amber light had won out and was turned reluctantly on me. She slumped slightly in her chair, relaxed into something like masculine ease, without taking her hands off her book. “What are those letters, exactly?” she asked, in her quiet foreign voice.

“Stoichev looked as if he had something else to say, but at that moment we heard vigorous footsteps on the stairs. He tried to rise, then shot me a pleading look. I snatched up the dragon folio and plunged into the next room with it, where I hid it as well as I could behind a box. I rejoined Stoichev and Helen in time to see Ranov open the door to the library.

“I am Mr. Bilbo Baggins. I have lost the dwarves
and I have lost the wizard, and I don’t know where I am;
and I don’t want to know, if only I can get away.”
“What’s he got in his handses?” said Gollum,
Looking at the sword, which he did not quite like.
“A sword, a blade which came out of Gondolin!”
“Ssss,” said Gollum, and became quite polite.
“Praps ye sits here and chats with it a bitsy, my preciousss.
It like riddles, praps it does, does it?”
He was anxious to appear friendly,
at any rate for the moment,
and until he found out more about the sword and the Hobbit,
whether he was quite alone really,
whether he was good to eat,
and whether Gollum was really hungry.
Riddles were all he could think of
asking them,
and sometimes guessing them,
had been the only game he had ever played
with other funny creatures
sitting in their holes in the long, long ago,
before he lost all his friends and was driven away,
alone and crept down, down,
Into the dark under the mountains.

“Very well,” said Bilbo, who was anxious to agree,
Until he found out more about the creature,
Whether he was quite alone,
Whether he was fierce or hungry,
And whether he was a friend of the goblins.

“You ask first,” he said,
Because he had not had time to think of a riddle.
“So Gollum hissed:
What has roots as nobody sees,
Is taller than trees,
Up, Up it goses,
And yet never grows?
“Easy!” said Bilbo.
“Mountain, I suppose.”
“Does it guess easy?
It must have a competition with us, my preciouss!
If precious asks, and it doesn’t answer,
Then we does what it wants, eh?
We shows it the way out , yes!”
“All right!” said Bilbo,
Not daring to disagree, and nearly bursting his brain
to think of riddles that could save him from being eaten.
Thirty white horses on a red hill,
First they champ,
Then they stamp,
Then they stand still.
That was all he could think of to ask ---
The idea of eating was rather on his mind.
It was rather an old one, too,
And Gollum knew the answer as well as you do.
“Chestnuts, chestnuts,” he hissed.
“Teeth! Teeth!
My preciousss; but we has only six!”
Then he asked his second:
Voiceless it cries,
Wingless flutters,
Toothless bites,
Mouthless mutters.
“Half a moment!” cried Bilbo, who was still thinking
Uncomfortably about eating.
Fortunately he had once heard something rather like this before,
And getting his wits back he thought of the answer.
“Wind, wind of course,” he said,
And he was so pleased that he made one up on the spot.
This’ll puzzle the nasty little underground creature,”
He thought:
An eye in a blue face
Saw an eye in a green face,
“That eye is to like this eye”
Said the first eye,
“But in low place,
Not in high place.”
“Ss, ss, ss,” said Gollum.
He had been underground a long long time,
And was forgetting this sort of thing.
But just as Bilbo was beginning to hope
The wretch would not answer,
Gollum brought up memories of ages and ages and ages before,
When he lived with his grandmother
In a hole in a bank by a river,
“Sss, sss, my Preciouss,” he said.
“Sun on the daisies it means, it does.”

I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years.

There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind --the humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter.

The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.

The humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art --and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling a humorous story--understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print --was created in America, and has remained at home.

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through.

Chapter One:
Birthday Presents

It was not that Omri didn't appreciate Patrick's birthday present to him. Far from it. He was really very grateful--sort of. It was, without a doubt, very kind of Patrick to give Omri anything at all, let alone a secondhand plastic Indian that he himself had finished with.

The trouble was, though, that Omri was getting a little fed up with small plastic figures, of which he had loads. Biscuit tinsful, probably three or four if they were all put away at the same time, which they never were because most of the time they were scattered about in the bathroom, the loft, the kitchen, the breakfast room, not to mention Omri's bedroom and the garden. The compost heap was full of soldiers which, over several autumns, had been raked up with the leaves by Omri's mother, who was rather careless about such things.

So ends the story of the strange and evil experience of the Invisible Man. And if you would learn more of him you must go to a little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord. The sign of the inn is an empty board save for a hat and boots, and the name is the title of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical protrusion, wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously, and he will tell you generously of all the things that happened to him after the time, and of how the lawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found upon him.

WHY TRAGEDY HAS HAUNTED AMERICA'S FIRST FAMILY FOR 150 YEARS: THE KENNEDY CURSE (Edward Klein, St. Martin's Press, July 8, 2003)

The marriage made front-page news everywhere, and a new Kennedy myth was born. The man who could have had any woman in the world had chosen as his bride one who was not rich or famous or ennobled by family background or distinguished by any professional accomplishment. What Carolyn had were certain charismatic qualities- exceptional beauty, a unique sense of style, and a shrewd, sharp, hard intelligence.

The media played the marriage as a Cinderella story, casting Carolyn as the commoner who had found true love with Prince Charming. But it turned out to be a doomed fairy tale, a nightmare of escalating domestic violence, sexual infidelity, and drugs - a union that seemed destined to end in one kind of disaster or another.

Thirty minutes later, the police received a call that a
young man matching the description of the one who had
wasted Pumpkin had been seen twice on Ninth Street
carrying a gun in open view and acting stranger than
most of the people on Ninth. He had tried to lure at least
one person into an abandoned lot, but the intended
victim had escaped and reported the incident.
The police found their man an hour later. His name
was Tequila Watson, black male, age twenty, with the
usual drug-related police record. No family to speak of.
No address. The last place he'd been sleeping was a
rehab unit on W Street. He'd managed to ditch the gun
somewhere, and if he'd robbed Pumpkin then he'd also
thrown away the cash or drugs or whatever the booty
was. His pockets were clean, as were his eyes. The cops
were certain Tequila was not under the influence of
anything when he was arrested. A quick and rough
5
interrogation took place on the street, then he was
handcuffed and shoved into the rear seat of a D.C. police
car.
They drove him back to Lamont Street, where they
arranged an impromptu encounter with the two
witnesses. Tequila was led into the alley where he'd left
Pumpkin. "Ever been here before?" a cop asked.
Tequila said nothing, just gawked at the puddle of
fresh blood on the dirty concrete. The two witnesses
were eased into the alley, then led quietly to a spot near
Tequila.
"That's him," both said at the same time.
"He's wearing the same clothes, same basketball
shoes, everything but the gun."
"That's him."
"No doubt about it."
Tequila was shoved into the car once again and taken
to jail. He was booked for murder and locked away with
no immediate chance of bail. Whether through
experience or just fear, Tequila never said a word to the
cops as they pried and cajoled and even threatened.
Nothing incriminating, nothing helpful. No indication of
why he would murder Pumpkin. No clue as to their
history, if one existed at all. A veteran detective made a
brief note in the file that the killing appeared a bit more
random than was customary.
No phone call was requested. No mention of a lawyer
or a bail bondsman. Tequila seemed dazed but content
to sit in a crowded cell and stare at the floor.

Sam moved forward and reached for the young man’s forearms. He hoped to subdue him quickly without any fighting and escort him from the playground; there was no point in provoking a riot. The tormenter, all slum muscle and grace, recoiled; Sam had barely touched him. The playground instructor saw the white arms and dirtied fists spring into position; a second later it was as if someone had exploded an electric light-bulb in his face. He was stumbling backward on his heel, feeling a thousand needles stinging his offended chin. Numbness radiated through his teeth and cheeks, and a little bath of salty blood was forming inside his lower lip. He had not fallen, however, and as his head cleared he saw the gatecrasher bouncing professionally, fists in the classic boxer’s pose, the abysmal face aglow with hoodlum joy.

When the lights disappeared, her hand went to the automatic she carried inside the belt of her slacks. She fingered its butt, trigger guard, and safety for perhaps the fifth time in the past half hour. It was the only visible sign of her nervousness. Their bedroom was directly ahead, the door open.

The street was empty and it was a cold night, a light rain was falling where he was driving to, but I guessed we were going down all the time toward the lower city. In the end he pulled up in a little side street, stopped the engine and got out of the car, telling me to wait inside. He disappeared for a moment and then came back and told me to get out. I followed him and he seemed tense now, looking from side to side like a thief or something.

Berry Gordy, founder and CEO of Motown Records, had a notorious reputation for not allowing his artists to flex their creative muscle. This is not to say that Gordy was indifferent to the natural evolutionary process that most creative artist experience. Berry Gordy's often times unrelenting position to the hit-making machine that was Motown was, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it”.

And I asked myself, frightened and rapt, who was she who rose before me like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun. Then the creature came still closer to me, throwing into a corner the dark package she had ‘til then held pressed to her body; and she raised her hand to stroke my face, and repeated the words I had already heard. And while I did not know whether to flee from her or move even closer, while my head was throbbing as if the trumpets of Joshua were about to bring down the walls of Jericho, as I yearned and at once feared to touch her, she smiled with great joy, emitted a stifled moan of a pleased she-goat, and undid the strings that closed her dress over her bosom, slipped the dress from her body like a tunic, and stood before me as Eve must have appeared to Adam in the garden of Eden.

…She wants to know what I study, what I plan to do in the future, what I think of private schools in Manhattan, what my parents do. I answer with as much filigree and insouciance as I can muster, trying to slightly cock my head like Snow White listening to the animals. She, in turn, is aiming for more of a Diane-Sawyer-pose, looking for answers which will confirm that I am not there to steal her husband, jewelry, friends, or child. In that order. Nanny Fact: in every one of my interviews, references are never checked. I am white. I speak French. My parents are college educated. I have no visible piercings and have been to Lincoln Center in the last two months. I’m hired.

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
by Clement Clarke Moore
or Henry Livingston

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

Once again the queen learned that holding the throne was harder than winning it. She spent the days after the uprising struggling with her conscience, faced with the agonizing question of what should be done with the rebels who had come against her and been so dramatically defeated. Clearly, God would protect this Mary on her throne, but God was not to be mocked. Mary must also protect herself.

The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe First two verses

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

Originally submitted By Hubert Williams

The Raven
By Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-
This it is, and nothing more."
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the door;-
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"-
Merely this, and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-
'Tis the wind and nothing more."
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed
he;But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore-
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door-
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered- not a feather then he fluttered-
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before-
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never- nevermore'."
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee- by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite- respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!- prophet still, if bird or devil!-
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-
On this home by horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore-
Is there- is there balm in Gilead?- tell me- tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil- prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore-
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting-
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted- nevermore!

The seeds Dickon and Mary had planted grew as if fairies had tended them. Satiny poppies of all tints danced in the breeze by the score, gaily defying flowers which had lived in the garden for years and which it might be confessed seemed rather to wonder how such new people had got there. And the roses--the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks and hanging from their branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long garlands falling in cascades --they came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair fresh leaves, and buds--and buds--tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air.

I came to Shawshank when I was just twenty, and I am one of the few people in our happy little family who is willing to own up to what he did. I committed murder. I put a large insurance policy on my wife, who was three years older than I was, and then I fixed the brakes of the Chevrolet coupe her father had given us as a wedding present, except I hadn’t planned on her stopping to pick up the neighbour woman and the neighbour woman’s infant son on the way down Castle Hill and into town.

I’ve told you as well as I can how it is to be an institutionalized man. At first you can’t stand those four walls, then you get so you can abide them, then you get so you can accept them ... and then, as your body, and your mind and your spirit adjust to life on an HO scale, you get to love them. You are told when to eat, when you can write letters, when you can smoke. If you’re at work in the laundry or the plate-shop, you’re assigned five minutes of each hour when you can go to the bathroom.

By the time that I got out into the grounds Sherlock Holmes was on the roof, and I could see him like an enormous glow-worm crawling very slowly along the ridge. I lost sight of him behind a stack of chimneys, but he presently reappeared and then vanished once more upon the opposite side. When I made my way round there I found him seated at one of the corner eaves.

"That you, Watson?" he cried.

"Yes."

"This is the place. What is that black thing down there?"

"A water-barrel."

"Top on it?"

"Yes."

"No sign of a ladder?"

"No."

"Confound the fellow! It's a most breakneck place. I ought to be able to come down where he could climb up. The water-pipe feels pretty firm. Here goes, anyhow."

There was a scuffling of feet, and the lantern began to come steadily down the side of the wall. Then with a light spring he came on to the barrel, and from there to the earth.

"It was easy to follow him," he said, drawing on his stockings and boots. "Tiles were loosened the whole way along, and in his hurry he dropped this. It confirms my diagnosis, as you doctors express it."

The object which he held up to me was a small pocket or pouch woven out of coloured grasses and with a few tawdry beads strung round it. In shape and size it was not unlike a cigarette case. Inside were half a dozen spines of dark wood, sharp at one end and rounded at the other, like that which had struck Bartholomew Sholto.

"They are hellish things," said he. "Look out that you don't prick yourself. I'm delighted to have them, for the chances are that they are all he has. There is the less fear of you or me finding one in our skin before long. I would sooner face a Martini bullet, myself. Are you game for a six-mile trudge, Watson?"

"Certainly." I answered.

The little which I had yet to learn of the case was told me by Sherlock Holmes as we travelled back next day.
“I had come to these conclusions before ever I had entered his room. An inspection of his chair showed me that he had been in the habit of standing on it, which of course would be necessary in order that he should reach the ventilator. The sight of the safe, the saucer of milk, and the loop of whipcord were enough to finally dispel any doubts which may have remained. The metallic clang heard by Miss Stoner was obviously caused by her stepfather hastily closing the door of his safe upon its terrible occupant Having once made up my mind, you know the steps which I took in order to put the matter to the proof.
I heard the creature hiss as I have no doubt that you did also, and I instantly lit the light and attacked it.”
“With the result of driving it through the ventilator.”
“And also with the result of causing it to turn upon its master at the other side. Some of the blows of my cane came home and roused its snakish temper, so that it flew upon the first person it saw. In this way I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr.Grimesby Roylott’s death, and I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience.”

"What kind of a man was your father- in- law , Mrs Flett" Lewis posed this question in a social voice, while spreading butter on a floury scone
"Well I'm not quite sure"
"But you must have some kind of impression
"An unhappy man .Aggrieved. His wife left him, you see
"Aha" Teasing " one of those old – fashioned happy families"
"His three sons took their mother's part. They refused to see their father. They would have nothing do with him"
"And this made him Bitter?
"It drove him back here" She swept a hand toward the window, taking in the drenched dark street, the black clouds,
"When he was sixty-five years old. I can only think he must have been bitter"
"But you don't know for sure"
"Actually"
"Yes?"
"Actually I never met my father-in -law"
"I see" Clearly he was taken a back.
"We never met, no. And I've always felt sorry about that.That we never met in his lifetime. I've almost thought ...well
"What?"
"That we might have things" she paused "to say to each other"

She rolled over and blinked him into focus. "What?, Who?" "The FBI Guys." She threw back the covers, scrambled from the bed and lunged toward the window, all in one motion. She raised a louver and peered through the blinds. A navy blue sedan was parked at the curb. Two suited men, one black, one white, were alighting. Turning back into the room, she looked at the clock on the nightstand. She had set her alarm for 8:30. It was 8:25. "They're early."

We have arrived at the girls' gym. We walk into the locker room and abracadabra! all the girls stop talking. Then there's a low ripple of talk that fills the silence. Helen and I have our lockers in the same bay. I open mine and take out my gym suit and shoes. I have thought about what I am going to do. I take off my shoes and stockings, strip down to my undershirt and panties. I'm not wearing a bra because it hurt too much.

"Hey, Helen," I say. I peel off my shirt, and Helen turns.

"Jesus Christ, Clare!" The bruises look even worse than they did yesterday. Some of them are greenish. There are welts on my thighs from Jason's belt. "Oh, Clare." Helen walks to me, and puts her arms around me, carefully. The room is silent, and I look over Helen's shoulder and see that all the girls have gathered around us, and they are all looking. Helen straightens up, and looks back at them, and says, "Well?" and someone in the back starts to clap, and they are all clapping, and laughing, and talking, and cheering, and I feel light, light as air.

As the late November winds cut across her legs and blew under her coat, Mattie shivered violently and realized that she had rushed from the house without any slip or stockings. She pulled her tweed coat closer to her neck to cut off the wind and stop her body from trembling with cold, and moved on toward the police precinct. The brick and glass building threw out a ghostly light against the thin morning air. She paused a moment to catch her breath before the iron lettering engraved over the door, and then pushed the slanted metal bar and went in.

The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

The wind whined. A few leaves blew, scraping across the floor. The air was damp and cold. They stood silently.

“I wonder if he thought of us.” Chris said, looking at the stone face. “I wonder if he ever missed us.”

“Of course he did,” the professor said. “Don’t you miss him?”

Chris nodded. Kate sniffed, and blew her nose.

“I do,” Johnson said.

They went back outside. They walked down the hill to the car. By now the rain had entirely stopped. But the clouds had remained dark and heavy, hanging low over the distant hills.

Preface
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. --- Charles Lamb

Chapter 1
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less as long as he could pass or punt.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of Boo Radley come out.
I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?

Toad Heaven by Morris Gleitzman
Chapter 1
Limpy stuck his head out of the grass and peered up and down the highway. He felt his crook leg twitching and his warts tingling like they always did when he was excited.
And scared.
All clear. No headlights speeding out of the darkness. No trucks, cars, buses, or caravans thundering down the highway. No humans on wheels looking for cane toads to squash.
“Let’s do it.” Said Limpy.
“Do what?” said Goliath.
Limpy sighed. He told himself to stay calm. He told himself not to even think about whacking Goliath round the head with a lump of possum poo.
“Goliath,” said Limpy, “try to concentrate.”
“I ain’t had any dinner yet,” grumbled Goliath.
“I’m so hungry I could eat a human’s hairbrush.”
Limpy gripped his cousin's big arms.
"We've got a plan, remember?" said Limpy. "If it works, it'll improve the lives of cane toads everywhere."
"What?" sneered a nearby bull ant. "Even the ones that are already flat?"
Limpy ignored the bull ant.
In the glow from the railway-crossing light, he saw that Goliath was frowning.
"This plan," said Goliath. "I still don't get it."
"Do exactly what I told you," said Limpy, "and you will."
Goliath nodded uncertainly.
"It'll never work," sneered the bull ant. "You cane toads are losers."
Limpy didn't eat the bull ant. What he and Goliath were about to do was too important to waste time having a snack.
"Good luck, Goliath," said Limpy.
His cousin didn't reply. Limpy could see that a frown was still creasing Goliath's big warty face.
Poor thing, thought Limpy. Probably as tense as me. Or else he's got a stink beetle stuck in his throat.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a travelogue written by American author John Steinbeck. It recounts tales of a 1960 road trip around the United State with his French standard poodle, Charley.
The next passage in my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it's difficult to analyze love when you are in it. Once, when I raptured in a violet glow given off by the Queen of the World, my father asked me why, and I thought he was crazy not to see. Of course I now know she was a mouse-haired, freckle-nosed, scabby-kneed little girl with a voice like a bat and the loving kindness of a gila monster, but then she lighted up the landscape and me. It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans. Here for the first time I heard a definite regional accent unaffected by TV, a slow-paced warm speech. It seemed to me that the frantic bustle of America was not in Montana. Its people did not seem afraid of shadows in a John Birch Society sense. The calm of the mountains and the rolling grasslands had got into the inhabitants. It was hunting season when I drove through the state. The men I talked to seemed to me not moved to a riot of seasonal slaughter but simply to be going out to kill edible meat. Again my attitude may be informed by love, but it seemed to me that the towns were places to live in rather than nervous hives. People had time to pause in their occupations to undertake the passing art of neighborliness.

Travels with Charley - Montana Script: Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a travelogue written by American author John Steinbeck. It recounts tales of a 1960 road trip around the United State with his French standard poodle, Charley. The next passage in my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it's difficult to analyze love when you are in it. Once, when I raptured in a violet glow given off by the Queen of the World, my father asked me why, and I thought he was crazy not to see. Of course I now know she was a mouse-haired, freckle-nosed, scabby-kneed little girl with a voice like a bat and the loving kindness of a gila monster, but then she lighted up the landscape and me. It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans. Here for the first time I heard a definite regional accent unaffected by TV, a slow-paced warm speech. It seemed to me that the frantic bustle of America was not in Montana. Its people did not seem afraid of shadows in a John Birch Society sense. The calm of the mountains and the rolling grasslands had got into the inhabitants. It was hunting season when I drove through the state. The men I talked to seemed to me not moved to a riot of seasonal slaughter but simply to be going out to kill edible meat. Again my attitude may be informed by love, but it seemed to me that the towns were places to live in rather than nervous hives. People had time to pause in their occupations to undertake the passing art of neighborliness.

First Impressions
The first day we passed at sea was Sunday. As we were just from port, and there was a great deal to be done on board, we were kept at work all day, and at night the watches were set, and everything was put into sea order. When we were called aft to be divided into watches, I had a good specimen of the manner of a sea captain. After the division had been made, he gave a short characteristic speech, walking the quarterdeck with a cigar in his mouth, and dropping the words between the puffs.
“Now , my men, we have begun a long voyage. If we get along well together, we shall have a comfortable time; if we don’t, we shall have hell afloat. All you have got to do is to obey your orders, and do your duty like men, then you will fare well enough; if you don’t, you will fare hard enough, I can tell you. If we pull together, you will find me a clever fellow; if we don’t, you will find me a bloody rascal. That’s all I’ve got to say. Go below, the larboard watch!”

The scene was not exactly new to me. Moved by the spirit of adventure, or by an excess of ennui which overtakes me at times, I had several times visited the gaudy establishment of Mercer, on the fashionable side of Fifth Avenue in the Fifties. In either case I had found disappointment; where the stake is a matter of indifference there can be no excitement; and besides, I had always been in luck.

But on this occasion I had a real purpose before me, though not an important one, and I surrendered my hat and coat to the servant at the door with a feeling of satisfaction.

At the entrance to the main room I met Bob Garforth, leaving. There was a scowl on his face and his hand trembled as he held it forth to take mine.

"Harry is inside. What a rotten hole," said he, and passed on. I smiled at his remark—it was being whispered about that Garforth had lost a quarter of a million at Mercer's within the month—and passed inside.

Gaudy, I have said it was, and it needs no other word. Not in its elements, but in their arrangement.

The rugs and pictures and hangings testified to the taste of the man who had selected them; but they were abominably disposed, and there were too many of them.

When a movie star walks down the street he is likely to be followed by an entourage, fans, and the paparazzi. An equally talented voice-over artist, on the other hand, usually remains invisible, no matter how successful she’s been. However, once people discover that she’s a voice-over artist, she’s in the limelight.
“What kind of jobs do you do?”
“Do I have the right kind of voice to do it?”
“How much money do you make?”
These are the questions that are likely to follow.
I discovered voice acting on my first production job at HBO. I was hooked after my initial recording in the booth. I studied, acted, and booked everything from spots to shows. These shows have included
E! Network’s Hollywood & Divine, Beauty Secrets Revealed. I was also the voice of Lifetime TV’s Billboards. This experience and my academic background were a perfect match for University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Extension.
Once I started teaching at UCLA Extension, I was surprised that so many people told me they were interested in pursuing voice-overs or taking my class.

Isabella had wrapped her face, her neck, and was beginning to relax in the spray of deliciously warm water over her body when suddenly -- there he was again! An ugly grinning face peered at her not a meter away from her own face, with one big fist gripping an iron bar, so he could raise himself to her level.

"Swine!" Isabella said between her teeth, ducking at the same time.
"Slut!" came his retort. "Ha,ha!'

This must have been the third intrusion by the same creep! Isabella, still stooped, got out of the shower and reached for the plastic bottle of yellow shampoo, shot some into a bowl which held a cake of soap (she removed the soap), let some hot water into the bowl and agitated the water until the suds rose, thick and sweet smelling. She set the bowl within easy reach on the rim of the tub and climbed back under the shower, breathing harder with her fury.

Just let him try it again! Defiantly erect, she soaped her facecloth, washed her thighs. The square recessed window was just to the left of her head, and there was a square of emptiness, stone-lined, between the blue-and-white tiled bathroom walls and the great iron bars, each as thick as her wrist, on the street side.

"Signora?" came the mocking voice again.

Isabella reached for the bowl, Now he had both hands on the bars. and his face was between them, unshaven, his black eyes intense, his loose mouth smiling. Isabella flung the suds, holding the bowl with fingers spread wide on its underside.

"Oof!" The head disappeared.

Novalee Nation, seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight—and superstitious about sevens—shifted uncomfortably in the seat of the old Plymouth and ran her hands down the curve of her belly.

For most people, sevens were lucky. But not for her. She’d had a bad history with them, starting with her seventh birthday, the day Mama Nell ran away with a baseball umpire named Fred. Then, when Novalee was in the seventh grade, Ronda Thalley, stole an ice cream truck for her boyfriend and sent to the Tennessee State School for Girls in Tullahoma.

By then, Novalee knew there was something screwy about sevens, so she tried to stay clear of them. But sometimes, she thought, you just can’t see things coming at you.

And that’s how she got stabbed. She just didn’t see it coming.
It happened right after she dropped out of school and started waiting tables at Red’s, a job that didn’t have anything to do with sevens.

White Fang
by Jack London
First Paragraph

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozenhearted Northland Wild.

From Better Homes and Gardens

In 1960, 5.8 million American kids lived in single-parent families. Today, that number has more than tripled, to an astonishing 18 million. Another figure is equally startling: nearly 40 percent of our children don't live in the same home as their biological father. Today, the number of kids whose parents are divorced is nearly equaled by the number of children in homes where there never has been a dad. One out of three babies in America today are born to unmarried women--a 600 percent increase since 1960. "Children need both a mom and a dad." Why both? In his recently published book, Life Without Father, Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe details the unique yin and yang generated by a woman-man parenting team. "Mothers tend to be responsive and fathers firm. Mothers stress emotional security and relationships while fathers stress competition and risk-taking. Mothers typically express more concern for the child's immediate well-being, while fathers concentrate on a child's long-term autonomy and independence," Popenoe says.

By itself, good writing is no guarantee of success. But words are more than words and business writing does not exist in a vacuum. What you write will always have a purpose and if you write well you are more likely to achieve it, and to succeed.

ALL RIGHT. THE STORY OF JERRY AND THE DOG! What I am going to tell you has something to do with how sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly; or maybe I only think that it has something to do with that. But, it's why I went to the zoo today, and why I walked north ... northerly, rather... until I came here.

All right. The dog, I think I told you, is a black monster of a beast: an oversized head, tiny, tiny ears, and eyes ... bloodshot eyes, infected, maybe; and body you can see the ribs through the skin. The dog is black, all black; all black except for the bloodshot eyes, and yes... and an open sore on it's .... right forepaw; that's red, too. And, oh yes; the poor monster, and I do believe it's an old dog.......