Title: Last Call
Author: Daniel Okrent
Page: 12
Word: augury
Definition:
- divination from auspices or omens
Title: Last Call
Author: Daniel Okrent
Page: 12
Word: augury
Definition:
Title: Carnage and Cultrue
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Page: 180
Word: harquebus or arquebus
Definition:
- a matchlock gun invented in the 15th century which was portable but heavy and was usually fired from a support
Title: The Wolves of Fairmount Park
Author: Dennis Tafoya
He knew that people fell out of love, but he knew it the way he knew people could eat insects or speak Estonian. Luis, his partner, had been married and divorced twice. Maybe it wasn’t luck, though, maybe, he thought, he was just too stubborn to change his mind about anything that really mattered. You loved someone, you loved them, and how was that ever not true?
Title: Have a Little Faith
Author: Mitch Albom
Today is, truly, our 31st anniversary. Hard to think back and realize all the changes over 31 years. By coincidence one of the chapters I read today was “A Good Marriage.” There were a number of great quotes in this section, on love, commitment, and marriage. I will quote just this one:
”I’ve had thirty wonderful years with my husband, and I’ll never forget the day we were married, November 3, 1944.”
”Wait…,” someone would say, doing the math, “that’s more than thirty years ago.”
”Right,” she would say. “On Monday you get twenty great minutes, on Tuesday you get a great hour. You put it all together, you get thirty great years.”
Title: Last Call
Author: Daniel Okrent
Page: 11
Word: protean
Definition:
- of or resembling Proteus in having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms
- displaying great diversity or variety
Title: Still Missing
Author: Chevy Stevens
Pub: St. Martins Press
ISBN: 978-0312595678
Started: 05/20/2010
Finished: 05/29/2010
Source: Publisher ARC
Annie O’Sullivan was abducted and held hostage for over a year by a psychopath control freak trying to create his own family at an isolated cabin in the mountains. He not only abused her sexually and physically but also psychologically, keeping her locked in the cabin and scheduling everything, even her visits to the bathroom.
We hear the story from Annie’s point of view as she talks to her therapist. As she recounts her abduction, captivity, and eventual escape, the story she tells is not only compelling but is also quite disturbing. Now home, she wonders if she will ever be able to readjust and overcome the paranoia that forces her to sleep in the security of her closet at night.
The reader is drawn into the story quite effectively. I felt like I was there, sometimes as the detached therapist but sometimes as Annie herself. Some of the scenes were so disturbing I wanted to go shower and get clean, myself, afterward.
“Why me?” is the questions many victims ask. Was it coincidence? Was it just random? Through the course of her therapy sessions Annie discovers the horror is not over and that the truth might be more than she can bear.
The last couple chapters, just when you were wondering how the story was going to end, kept me up way past bed time.
Title: Carnage and Cultrue
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Page: 176
Word: caudillo
Definition:
- A leader or chief, especially a military dictator.
- A political boss; an overlord.
- Spanish: leader, spanish pronunciation of double 'L'
Title: Last Call
Author: Daniel Okrent
In 1920 could anyone have believed that the Eighteenth Amendment, ostensibly addressing the single subject of intoxicating beverages, would set off an avalanche of change in areas as diverse as international trade, speedboat design, tourism practices, soft-drink marketing, and the English language itself? Or that it would provoke the establishment of the first nationwide criminal syndicate, the idea of home dinner parties, the deep engagement of women in political issues other than suffrage, and the creation of Las Vegas?
Title: Carnage and Cultrue
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Page: 118
Word: élan
Definition:
- spirited self-assurance; verve; dash; enthusiasm
Title: Last Call
Author: Daniel Okrent
It is amazing how Christians can confuse social change with Gospel Truth. We want to use laws, protests, and even intimidation to make external changes on a world that needs a change of heart.
No one marked the day (start of Prohibition) as fervently as evangelist Billy Sunday, who conducted a revival meeting in Norfolk, Virginia. Ten thousand grateful people jammed Sunday’s enormous tabernacle to hear him announce the death of liquor and reveal the advent of an earthly paradise. “The reign of tears is over,” Sunday proclaimed. “The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.”
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