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Be My Escape
Song: Be My Escape by Relent K
A/N: The first chapters of this story are partly re-written and heavily revised from the originals until an A/N states otherwise.
I've given up, I'm giving up slowly.
I'm blending in so you won't even know me
She didn't belong there, she knew that. She also knew that she wasn't the only one.
From all over Ooo, every town and village, every cave and kingdom, people of all types flock to this one place, this once deserted place.
She knew she wasn't meant to be there on any circumstances, but she blended into the crowd well enough to go more than unnoticed; she'd been looked over all night, no one cared.
The line had been stretching on literally for miles. This sight to see was a once in a generation, once in a life, the wait meant nothing to what they were here for.
Rumors had been flung around Ooo for weeks to almost a month, that's why she was here. She was the only one who actually knew, who could prove that they were true.
They couldn't be, though.
They could only be lies and ignorance.
They had to be.
"How could somebody even find one?" A person had asked from behind her to another.
"I wish I knew, I thought there weren't any more."
"But that's what everyone thought. Maybe it's not even real? Maybe they made a mistake, and it's not?"
"We better hope it is. We've been waiting for hours!"
She could hear the impatience in their voices, but she wasn't like that. She had an endless amount of time ahead of her, an endless amount of time behind her as well. A few hours were mere seconds- waiting was nothing.
Apart from this whole world that shares my fate
He had been locked in there, for who knows how long. Each night and day for almost a month he's been stared at, had things thrown at him, prodded, and screamed at to move. He was not an animal, but treated as one nonetheless. He was not one of them, is what he's been reminded.
He didn't belong here, he knew it. But he wouldn't- he couldn't- leave, you see.
Yet another, "Look! Look at it! It's so weird!" Was called out but went right through his ears.
No, he wasn't part of this world. He was here for the world to decide what to do with him.
'Cause I know to live, you must give your life away
But what if the rumors were true? She told herself they weren't, they couldn't be, and they weren't.
She'd had her life taken away for a reason. It had nothing to do with flight, fangs, power, or eternity. It had nothing to do with anything. Eternity was a sucker punch in itself, but thanks to it she was more knowledgeable than you may realize. She didn't have a true reason why she would want to live an eternity, and that may have been because she didn't.
Who would? To be stuck in one place in time… forever?
"No, they're extinct, I've told you already. We're coming to see the Cyclops."
That was a lie, too. Everyone wanted and needed to see this, even her. Something had to be wrong for there to be one still alive.
And I've been housing all this doubt, and insecurity.
He would never get out. Even after all the times he's tried he could never save himself. There was never a time in his life where another had even attempted to help ease his torments. It didn't take long before he had come to the conclusion that he was worth less than nothing.
But he didn't show it, no one would care though. He didn't try to leave, because he knew he'd be dragged back in chains by his ankles.
And I've been locked inside that house, all the while you hold the key
Before sheknew it unlike the rest, the line had moved her to the front. Everyone around was excited to finally enter, and that was the only thing she shared with them.
The staff member took the dollar bills from the awaiting, letting each in one at a time.
In what must have been only moment, she was taking the last steps to stand directly in front of the cage.
And I've been dying to get out, and that might be the death of me
But if he somehow succeeded in escape, he would be killed. Most likely by the colorful, gentle creatures called Rainicorns. And speaking of which, they hadn't been allowed into the room where he was kept, and viewed at a "Safe Distance", but that distance was not for him.
He may have sort of tried to get at someone, but what could you expect?
He had gotten as far as he could through the bars of his cage, his own eyes filled with furry as he attempted to reach out to the man the previous day. He didn't get far, though.
He was a sight to see, alright! Like an animal, but still not. Like a person, but far from it.
He had always asked them, asked himself, and asked the visitors what he was.
He only received one answer-
Even though, there's no way of knowing where to go, I promise I'm going
There was an uncountable number of people in there
The lack of air made her dizzy in an instant. Who would stay in here?
Maybe that was what actually drove them out for the next group.
She began to shove herself through the sea of bodies. Slipping through shoulders, ducking under arms, and stepping over kids. She was going to get to the front to see it.
"Look at it! What is it?!"
That stung. Even if it wasn't directed at her, it sizzled on her skin like the sunlight.
She tugged on the hood of her cloak to cover her eyes further, breathing in deeply the scent of all the blood in the room that was hidden under flesh.
O-Oh I've got to get out of here
I'm stuck inside this rut that I fell into by mistake
He was scared.
Glob, was he afraid.
All those people, for weeks. All that sound, it was too much! And he could hardly breathe now, was he dying?
He was ignored as an infant, no one came to pick him up. He was considered a weird goblin up until the point when he took off his hat in public. Only one person in that entire crowd from so long ago knew him for what he was, whatever he was- Human? He still had no idea of the meaning.
He was gagged, hog-tied, blindfolded, and thrown into a body-bag when he was nine. The first sight he saw was that "Ring Master". He was in a different cage at that time, though, one meant for the most vicious of beasts.
He knew he wasn't meant to be there. He was meant to be free. It called through his veins and every cell in his malnourished body that he needed freedom, more than just wanted it. Was there something wrong with him? Was he crazy? What… what was wrong with him?
But it was his fault, is what he's told.
His entire fault for where he ended up.
And no one was going to save him.
O-Oh, I got to get out of here
Her goal was to leave as soon as possible. But in that first instant, looking into those frightened blue eyes, she knew she couldn't.
Seeing the loss, the fear, and the hopelessness simply screaming in his gaze. Unable to look away, she was just as trapped as he was.
The laughs, the oohs, and aahs, they all were fading into the background. All she could see was the un-bathed, grotesque creature curled small in the corner of his cage, as far from her as possible. Only its eyes peeked out from above its knees, studying her as she him.
The rumors were true.
Dang, were they true.
That was not good.
The engraved metal banner welded to the front of his container said the truth: The Last Human
She could smell the sweetness of his blood through the sweat of the crowd, something she hasn't even dreamed of in centuries. The rabid side of her yearned to yank away the bars to his cell, and suck him dry. She was one of the known two things in Ooo that would kill any human for their own benefit.
She raises a hand to her hood, and pushes it down to her shoulders to show her face.
Almost immediately screams start to echo back and forth through the ocean of citizens.
The human rose from his position, revealing he was on the shorter side of five feet, and who's clothes hung loosely on the bag of bones he was. His ragged locks of hair fell over his face, but were hastily shoved away as he watched everyone dispatch, fighting to get out the tent.
Literally, everything was cleared in minutes. All that was left was the unmoving Cyclops, the Vampire, and the Human.
And I'm begging you
He stared into her red eyes, questioning and thinking and wondering. Somehow, he didn't feel safe holding her gaze.He knew he shouldn't have, for everyone else had fled for what must have been an obvious reason.
"It's amazing," She says coolly. Stepping the extra few yards to the edge of his cage, "How at least one survives."
He isn't speaking, not for here, not for anyone.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, "How long have you been here?"
He bravely, takes a step towards her, but that's all.
She raises an eye-brow, expecting something more. But reluctantly she says "Marceline the Vampire Queen; you are…?"
His lips tighten and his eyes drop to the metal floor. His fingers began to play with the end of his clothes, and the toes of his bare feet curled. He was a Human.
She blows a piece of onyx hair from her line of view. "Why are you in a cage? From what I remember, it should be the other way around." She crosses her arms, turning her head away to mumble the last words.
I'm begging you
She bared her fangs, and hissed. He jumped away, and scooted as far back to the wall of the container as he could.
"What, are you afraid?" And then she laughed.
She cackled. Right at him.
He tried not to cry, and get his heart's beating under control.
He was taught to be an animal. She wasn't going to take that.
"Look guy. This is wrong, I can tell you that much. But as long as I'm here, no one's gonna be coming back in." She took the two bars, and bended them easily to a space big enough for him to climb out of. "So, go on! Before someone figures out about the 'No Stakes to the Heart' rule."
He eyed her, then the new door, then her again.
After so long since the last time he escaped, he can just walk out of his prison? It was some kind of trick, the Ring Master was testing him… she was going to come out of nowhere and have him beaten, or killed, or STARVED OR DROWNED OR EATEN OR-
"What are you just sitting there for?!"
I'm begging you
She lifted her hood above her head again, and scoffed, "Fine! I was just trying to help!" She raised from the ground, and disappeared faster than his eyes could take in.
He was hesitant at first. He hadn't stepped foot out of that cage in so long since his last liberal attempt.
Could he, would he?
He peeks his upper body out, then his lower, and swiftly drops to the trampled ground.
What if he was caught? What if he was kept in a dark room, where he would never be allowed to see sunlight again?
He looked over to the still Cyclops, but turned away before he could get emotional.
He wouldn't be caught if he ran fast enough, right?
He took only a couple of baby steps, before a voice shouts out from behind him.
He turned slowly, fear racing through him again.
Then a yellow dog, only half his height, is waving from the entrance to Ring Master's quarters. Had he been there the whole time?
"Are you going somewhere?" The dog was smiling, but not in an evil way. He didn't wait for an answer, though, "C'mon, let's get out of here before that chick comes back."
He's silent for a moment before whispering "Who are you?"
The dog's smile didn't fade, "I'm Jake."
To be my escape
Thank you White-Wolf-Purple-Eyes as a beta, and I'll be getting back to you guys in two days with the second chapter.
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splatter patterns
the perfect catastrophe
fueled by the gun to your
head mentality; you mix
those colours like the
way I mix these words
on this page
they are stronger together
the contrast between the
orange and blue compliment
each other like how the
black text against a white
page enrages this passion
even though there's so
much death in your art,
I can feel the life that flows
through your fingers and
how you map your thoughts
with lines and shading
creating, destroying
after all you're the
creator and the only
method to this madness
is self-destruction and
the paint does splatter
a/n: inspired by my friend's drawing. it really is a beautiful one. imagine two dead fishes coming out of a gun and then a purple, blue and orange background with leaves pattern.
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NOTE: The chapters have been updated and replaced. (The Anecdote has been taken out). They have been proofread and edited, thus dramatic changes have occurred. I apologize for any inconvenience. The title of the story will also be changed soon. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to PM me. :)
"Are those…Marric, an Iron Knight and a grown man and he cannot pick up his own dirty socks?" Lady Leandra asks me as she disgustingly tosses the socks into a woven basket.
"Men and boys, they are all the same you hear me? I tell you, stay away from them. It is for your own good." She warns me as I keep laughing. "Oh, that brings a tear to my eye." I chuckle while wiping a tear away. She places a small box into my hands, "Here, your mother has been asking for these. I was finally able to find them." She claps her hands together to clear away the dust from her hands. "I'll give this to Mother as soon as possible. I have a lot of chores to do today, but I can squeeze this in for Mother." I say.
"You tell her I said 'hello' and I miss her." She gives a short pause. How is she nowadays?" She asks. "Mother is doing well. I hope she still isn't mad at Luke for going off to war soon." I say. "Oh dear, that must be heartbreaking, but what about you, are you all right with that?" She asks. "I have to admit, I am actually…I just wish he could take me along." I look down at my feet. "You are a very skilled, young girl, Zonitia. You'll be eighteen soon won't you?"
Yes, that's right. It's almost the end of summer. Fall will be here soon. "I-I am not as good as Brother, or Father. It is not proper for a young lady to turn to Knighthood instead of books and practicing tea ceremonies." I laugh, my heart sinking sorrowfully.
"Oh, but that is what makes you who you are, a true Vladmiyr." She smiles at me turns me towards the door. "You should be heading back now. I do not want you suffering any consequences for your absence." She opens the door and the afternoon sun begins to progress towards evening.
"Ah, yes. I should be going now. Have a good afternoon, Lady Leandra." I bow my head to her and she does the same. "May the Maker watch over you." I walk off with the box in my hands, smiling up at the sky.
In the lands of Greycliff resides Castle Vladmiyr, my home. The slate-gray castle looms over the village and stands tall; its towering feature gives it a strong appearance to represent this monarchy and good people. There goes the Baker selling those loaves of bread. I smile at the old man as he offers me a free piece of his sweet bread. And the man that pushes his cart of pumpkins to market. "Good morning, my lady!" The Tailor lady waves at me. "Good morning!" I answer with a smile. Outside of the castle, the market is wonderful and the people are very nice. I have always wondered, however, what was beyond this kingdom's territory.
"Zonitia!" I hear my name and I look up to see someone running towards me. It was the courier, Ky. "Oh, is there something wrong?" I ask. He's leaned over, catching his breath and I could see he ran a long way for this urgent message. "Y-Your mother…Your mother is…" He pants heavily and slowly tries to collect himself. "What about her?" I stand rooted to the ground, gripping onto the box tightly as I wait for his answer.
He swallows hard and finally stands up straight, taking in a deep breath. "Your mother wishes for your return. It is important that you do so immediately." He says with control and perfect performance as if he never ran here at all. Ky is one of our best couriers after all, only sometimes he can worry me. I sigh with relief that she wasn't in any danger or the message wasn't anything bad. "Did she ask you why?" I ask. He scratches his head to think and shakes a no. "She really didn't say anything." He gestures for me to walk ahead first. "If so, then let us make haste." I turn to a slight run, careful with the box in my hands. "Wh-what? Wait! I-I just ran from the castle." He complains but I continue to move on. "Please wait for me, Lady Zonitia!" Ky calls from behind me. What could it be that Mother wants?
I take the short-cut to the Barracks, passing the Courtroom, but at the corner of my eye I see my father in the room with two other men.
I step back and peer inside but I kept behind the doorway. I was quite familiar with one of the guests, but I didn't recognize the other man.
He wore shining ivory armor with a coal black cloth around his waist along with a red leather belt and his weapons hung sturdy. He was fully dressed in body armor and chainmail, but he had no helmet. He appeared to be a little older than my father. He had a rough cut moustache, short dark hair and tan skin. He held a strong appearance and was definitely not from around here.
I see the man turn to me and I quickly hide behind the wall. "Oh yes…that would be my daughter," I hear my father after a short pause. "Pumpkin!" He calls that stupid nickname he's given me when I was a kid and I feel a little embarrassed.
I walk into the room towards my father. I approach cautiously but my curiosity bested me and my current duty was immediately forgotten. "Arl Julian you remember my daughter, Zonitia?" I glanced over at the Arl of Luveria and he gives a tired smile. "I see she has grown up to be a fine young woman, pleased to meet you again, my dear." He says. "As to you too, Arl Julian" I answer, nodding my head. "My son Leroy asked of you, perhaps I should bring him along on my next visit." He suggests and I was struck off guard by the question. "Leroy is a few years younger than I am." I reply and he only laughs. "As you get older the lesser the years will matter, a lesson for you, dear." I wanted to roll my eyes but instead I shrug my shoulders.
"I doubt she will be interested, Julian. My fierce girl has a mind of her own these days, Maker bless her heart." Father remarks and I scowl at him. "Hmmm…it's no doubt because you've trained her as a warrior, how unique." The Arl replies.
"I was about to send for you but it seems I had been occupied with the issues of my troops being delayed. While your brother and I are both away I'm leaving you in charge of the castle." Leaving me in charge?
"Wait…What? Where are you going? Are you sure?" I ask shockingly. "I'll be in charge of Luveria while Julian, your brother and his troops are marching to Eustray. A small token of the force will still be here and you must keep peace in the region. You know what they say about mice when the cat is gone correct?" My father jokes and I shake my head a little as he chuckles to himself.
"Also, there is someone I want you to meet." He holds his hand out to the stranger, "This is Ser Cedric."
With respect, I remembered my manners and quickly I addressed the man. "M-Messere." I hesitate to give a clumsy awkward curtsy to the guest. "Please, there is no need for that." He chuckles and saves me from doing that idiotic gesture.
"Cedric is a Sabre, Pumpkin. We rarely have the pleasure of meeting one in person. Julian was saying how he was at such a disadvantage with someone of this stature." Father introduces me to the man and I had to agree with the Arl. A person with such caliber deserved certain protocols but immediately I was ecstatic. "A real Sabre in person, a guardian from the legendary order stands in front of me!" I gasped. "Now this is something I don't come across very often." Cedric is surprised of my small outburst and I blush a little.
"I've read a few stories that have mentioned the Sabres, but to meet one in real-life is unbelievable. Yet here one stands in the flesh." I only know so little about the Sabres therefore I silenced myself after the Sabre chuckles with either uneasiness or amusement.
"Cedric is looking for recruits before joining Julian and his fellow Sabres in the south. I believe he has his eyes on Ser William." Father explains. "What about Ser Leander? He is a very skilled man and he has grown so much the last time I have met him." Julian recommends. "Ser Leander?" Cedric asks.
"What?" I spat at the Arl and he looks at me in shock.
"If I might be so bold, I would suggest that your daughter is also an excellent candidate." Cedric looks at Father and the words slowly processed into my mind. A Sabre? Me? "Honor though that may be, this is my daughter you are talking about." My father steps in front of me, as if he was shielding me from receiving such words. "I think I'd rather like that idea." I mutter to myself. "I've not so many children that I would be glad to see sent off to battle. Unless you intend to invoke the Conscription…?" My father asks the Sabre who only shakes his head. "There are other recruits out there, your lordship; this is not an issue I will force."
My father lets out a sigh of relief and turns to me, "Pumpkin will you ensure that Cedric's requests are fulfilled while I am away?" he asks me and I happily agree to it. "In the meantime, find Luke and tell him to prepare to head off with Julian."
"Of course, Father, but…is this really a Quake?" I turn to ask Cedric. "Yes, are the Sabres certain this isn't some abyssal raid?" Arl Julian asks the Sabre. "No zoarkdemon has been spotted, but with my entire soul, this is a Quake." Cedric explains. "Rimedi is close to ruins if this Quake is kept up." Julian says.
"Alright now, Pumpkin, you may speak with the Sabre after you find your brother. Cedric, Julian and I need to speak alone for now." He rubs my head and I scowl at him angrily. "Yes, father, but I'm not a little girl anymore." I say through gritted teeth.
"Zonitia?!" I hear my name being called and I swing around, seeing Ky entering the room. "I finally found you, why are you not with your mother?! Do you know that if I do not show up with you she would feed me to the Fyurors?!" He almost wanted to shriek out those words and I had almost forgotten my duty. "Oh yes! I-It was nice meeting you, Ser Cedric! I hope to see you at dinner!" I bow to him on my way towards the door and soon turning to a run, unable to hear what the Sabre said.
The guardsmen pointed out my mother towards the Barracks. She's there? Guardsmen walk by in pairs or triples as they head off to their duties. I open the heavy double doors to the main room and found Mother. "Mother!?" I say loudly. She was speaking with two other noble women, until her eyes meet mine.
"Oh, my daughter is finally here. Now we can discuss this issue much thoroughly," She places her hands on my shoulders after I approach the adults. "Zonitia, you remember Lady Daffe, from the banquet last weekend?" She turns my body to the grey haired woman with dramatic purple eye shadow and red lips. "Er, yes, I do." I hardly remember that night, mainly because I had no interest in it. She smiles at me and then to my mother. "And this is Lady Isabelle." Mother turns me to the other woman with dark chocolate brown hair, dark brown eye-shadow and perfect almond colored skin. She was a really beautiful woman. "It's nice to meet you." I nod my head to her and she does the same with a lovely smile. "What a beautiful daughter you have. She would definitely be a perfect suitor for Isaac." She says to Mother. Suitor? I look up at Mother with a concerned look.
"Wh-what…Mother?" I stutter on my words in horror. "Yes, my son, Isaac. You must have met him last weekend. Do you remember him as well?" Lady Isabelle asks. She calls for her son and I see him by the servants, flirting happily away with them. Actually, I don't remember you at all.. He was dressed in a formal red uniform with gold embroideries and gems.
Isaac had the charming, sharp handsome features of prince charming, masking underneath his charisma was a fake heartbreaking bastard. He is the type of boy who had nothing better to do but chase any big breasted girl around all day or insult those who were below him.
"Zonitia Rhea Vladmiyr," He walks up to me and gives me a to-die for smile. I played a long well, using the wit I learned from my lessons. "It is an honor to finally meet the Teyrna of Greycliff's daughter. I have heard much about you." He bows and I only stand there, but Mother forces me to curtsy. He then eyes me, scanning my body from head to toe and I felt a need to take a bath from the disgust of what I felt. I am sure you have heard about me.
"I'm sorry but I'm not looking forward for any marriage or anything at this moment." I say as briefly as I can, waving a hand. "Now, now, darling, you would have to sooner or later; it is your duty as the only daughter of the Vladmiyr lineage that you get married to another noble. You must keep the title to your children after you." Mother says, patting my shoulders, but I step back a little. Who said I was going to have children? "I want to explore the WakingSeas, Mother. I want to duel in daring swordfights and fight the abyssals next to Luke and end the Quake for good." I whisper loud enough for only her to hear and she becomes angry, but realizes her guests are still around. "Oh my," Lady Daffe gasps, overhearing what I had said. "I apologize. You three must be busy around here. Shall we continue this another time?" Mother asks.
"Yes of course, another time, dears." Lady Isabelle says pushing Isaac away whose attention was immediately distracted by another one of the house servants. "We shouldn't bother you at the moment. We shall continue again tomorrow, maybe in the Green Room?" Mother agrees and they negotiate on a meeting place to discuss this issue further more.
Mother sighs as she watches her guests leave, then turns to me with crossed arms. "Come." She walks off and I follow like a puppy. "It is improper for a young lady to be thinking of war rather than studying your lessons." She says. "Is this what you called me here for? To set me up with a young man-boy I don't even know?" I ask angrily.
"Oh no, it was not for that. The matter is about Luke." We walk outside towards the outside Halls. "Brother?" I ask, keeping up with her fast pace. "He will soon be departing for war. You should see him off before he leaves." She says, turning to me.
"Father wanted me to find Luke actually. Oh, did you hear about the Sabre?" I ask her. "Yes your father mentioned something about that. You haven't gotten it into your head that you want to be recruited?" She slyly asks and I laugh nervously. "There's enough here at the castle to occupy you. You shouldn't be thinking of such things. The softer arts may help you land a husband after all. I don't need you chasing danger like your brother" She explains. Softer arts?
"I know it is difficult to stay in the castle and watch others ride off, but we must see to our duties first as the women. You understand that don't you?" I question my parent's rules and regulations. My mother was strict and very disciplined while my father and I had similar tastes. "Yes, we'll have to cope with it." I sigh. "…I will be going to see Luke now." I walk pass her.
How amazing and lucky Luke is. He would be like the heroes in the stories I have read about. He would be able to charge into battles, destroying Abyssal as if they were only toys. He would conquer the lands and marry a princess…oh wait, Luke is already married.
I walk up the stairs towards Luke's bedroom. "Do you have to go, Father? When you come back will I get to use a sward?" I could hear Kyle in the room. "That's sword, Kyle. Don't worry, Son. When I return, you would become a strong young man, promise me that will you?" Luke asks. I knock on the door, waiting until it is open for my invite. "Come in." I hear Vivian and I enter.
I see Luke knelt down in front of Kyle, Vivian standing next to her son and husband. "Well, if it isn't my dearest sister!" Luke stands up. "Mother informed me about your departure." I smile. "Ah, yes…I would have felt very sad if you weren't there to say goodbye." He says. "Father has sent me to tell you that Julian will be heading off tonight…I wish I could go with you." I look at my feet
"Understood, sister and having you fight beside me in battle would be a sight to see wouldn't it? The Vladmiyr siblings battling beside each other to end the abyssal horde." He chuckles and I had to smile at the humor. Kyle walks towards me jumping up and down excitedly. "Auntie, are you going to teach me how to use a sword?" He asks. He is so adorable. I could not take my eyes off his bright, big blue gaze. "Take that dire rabbit. Fall before my lucky sword, Justice!" He swings his arms around as if he wielded a blade in his hands.
I hide my laughter and Vivian was not happy seeing her son doing that. "See what you have done Luke?" She looks at my brother.
"What did I do?" He was shocked by the remark.
"Of course I would, Kyle. You are my beloved nephew, after all," I kneel down to rub his silky brown hair and he laughs happily. "Your family sometimes pains me, Luke." Vivian sighs.
"Oh…there's a Sabre here looking for a recruit." I stand up, looking at Luke. "Really, even before the soldiers go off towards the Shredded Wylds? I would recommend Ser Leander for that." He chuckles. "Julian said the same thing." I mutter. "I'm only joking; my little sister does have a little crush on the older man now does she?" He gets me into a head lock and I angrily elbow his stomach. He grunts in pain and I shove him away from me. "Th-That is not true, how dare you say such things!?" I argue, blushing.
"The sun is setting soon. You should be finishing your packing." Vivian says. "Oh yes." Luke turns to me. "Take care of my wife and Kyle for me, Sister." He grabs my shoulders. "Why can't you take me with you?" I ask, slouching a little. "I just can't. Don't forget how to use a blade, blades could kill or protect." He warns me. "I will, Luke." I say quietly.
I left their room so Luke can spend his last moments with his family. I walk outside towards the StoneGarden, where Greycliff Embrium Roses grow. They are a bright, ivory rose streaked with sapphire blue designs and they are my favorite flowers in the world of Athynia. They grow in all seasons, no matter how hot or cold, they will grow perfectly and blossom well. "Zonitia!" I hear my name call from the distance and I turn around.
The moment our eyes met, my face grows hot and my heart pounded against my chest. "M-Messere!" I bow quickly, hiding my blush. L-Leander is here. Why?! I can feel his approach inside my soul and my physical reality. "You don't always have to greet me formally. It makes me feel a little lonely." Leander laughs. "W-Well…my mother scolded me about being more lady-like earlier and that it is improper for a young lady to turn to weaponology and war than to study physics and poise." I grumble, finally standing up straight. "But…I find you proper and lady-like anyway." He compliments and I still feel my blush, knowing it wasn't going to leave as long as he was around and I pretend to rub something from my cheek, hiding it.
"Oh…thank you." I say. "I think it is normal for a young lady to think that way, but…you are a noble." He stands next to me to look at the Embrium Roses. "Did you meet the Sabre?" He asks me. "Oh, yes! Cedric!" I say, turning to him. "I think Cedric is going to meet with you sooner or later. You were said to be a good candidate." I say happily. "Really?" He asks me with an exciting voice.
"This is quite thrilling. Me, become a Sabre? It's like a dream come true." For a twenty-three year old acting like this around an almost eighteen year old…he was rather strange.
Ser Leander Windgate, a man with excellent knowledge on weapons and formations of military ideas all burned into his mind and body.
Leander drafted himself into the Iron Knight chivalry a few years ago to provide for his family. He is a kind and brave hearted person and if he was of nobility…what would it be like between us? This is all I know about his past anyways, from what I heard. I never really asked myself.
"It has been a couple of years since we first met, hasn't it, Zonitia?" He asks me as we take a stroll towards the back of the Castle, where the kitchen, the Dining Hall and the servant's corner were located. "Yes…twelve years already." I answer. What a strange question to ask. "It has been a long time…it has been really fun hasn't it?" I smile at his words. "Really? Is it because how well you are treated here? Or is it the food and household?" I chuckle. "No…actually, it is because of-"
We hear a loud scream coming from the kitchen before he could finish, but I react quickly and we dash towards the clattering sounds of pots and pans. We can hear the head chef, Nera, yelling at her workers. "What's happening here?" Leander asks. Nera turns around angrily. Her workers cower in fear in a corner. "You! Your filthy warhound has broken into my food storage once again!" She points at me. "What? No! He's a good boy!" I argue.
"That hound is nothing but trouble around here." She continues. "You don't have any proof that my dog just broke into your storage." I say. "Oh? Go see for yourself then, my lady." She holds her hand out towards the food larder and I walk towards it. "Get back to work, stupid elves." I hear Nera shouting. "They are like you and I, Nera. You sound like a magister of the Sylvre Imperium. They have a job; they are not slaves, but servants." Leander says to Nera. "I don't care! Just get that thing out of my kitchen!"
I enter the storage room, seeing my white Fyuror warhound, staring at large wheat bags full of rice. "Heal boy!" I angrily say. He only growls at the bags and it gets louder each time. "Bandit!" I raise my voice a little and his ears finally perk up and he turns to me, wagging his tail happily, but then, he goes back to growling at the rice. "Is something wrong?" Leander asks as he hurries into the larder. Bandit's growling grows.
Then, we hear a clatter. "What was that?" I ask, grabbing the handle of my twin daggers around my waist. Leander takes out his sword, ready to attack anything that would strike first.
It was silent and I examine every corner, every crack that would shuffle or scurry. I grip onto my daggers and Bandit barks. I see a giant shadow dash out from the rice bags. It was a giant rat and its red eyes glare at us. "There's more." Leander says. I can hear so much more of the critters. They appear out from the dark shadows. They are unafraid of humans and will devour our bodies if they are hungry enough, of course, they travel in packs, just like abyssals. "Damn it!" Leander grunts. "It bit me."
I stab my dagger into a rat's skull, kicking one off the floor and Bandit pounces after the rat. Blood stains the floor, our clothing and weapons. It was a small massacre of dead rats. "They…won't be happy cleaning this up are they?" I ask. "I don't think so either." We both look at Bandit. He cocks his head to the side, panting like an innocent puppy. "Will you clean this up?" I ask him. He barks and soon he begins to consume the rats while we wait for the place to look normal again.
For a while, the storage room was finally clean. "You must be so tired Bandit." I scratch my dog's head and he wags his tail happily. "We should tell Nera she had a rat problem in her storage room." Leander says. "Wouldn't that scare off the servants?" I ask. "Better that than have disease carrying rodents or an angry bat." He opens the door and waits for me to walk ahead.
The kitchen was busy like it should be everyday. The elf maids were cooking under Nera's command while she checks the texture of the dishes and the taste. "We have solved your problem," I speak to her. "Good. Keep your animal out of my kitchen next time." She says walking towards us. "Oh, I hope my flour isn't all over the place." She mutters. "You had a rat dilemma, which is why Bandit was in there." I say. "Did she say rats?" One of the elf servants asks. That simple word created disaster. Dishes were dropped, pots were left on the burner to burn, and food was left in the open unattended. Everyone runs out in fear, except for Nera.
"Look what you did now. You scared off my workers." She crosses her arms. "If it wasn't for Bandit, you would've had a bigger crisis." Leander says. "Yes…you're right." She sighs, looking both ways. "Here you go, Bandit. An apology, but do not speak of this to anyone." There is always a negative and a positive side to everything. Even the purest heart in a person could turn corrupted and horrid. Nera is kind of like that. She is a cold, strict old woman but she can be soft.
She hands Bandit a left over slab of meat and he enjoys it to himself. "Even after cleaning up in there, he's still hungry?" I ask Leander as we walk out of the Kitchen room. "He is a warhound after all. They have quite an appetite." He laughs with me. "You should go speak to Cedric before he goes off to bed tonight. I have to see Luke off soon at the gates…and I'm sure my father would like for me to see off Julian too." I say and give a little shiver. Leander smiles at me and we look at each other for a few minutes before I shift my eyes to something else.
"I should get Bandit cleaned up." I walk off towards the StoneGarden. "Good night." He says. "Good night." I answer. You…would probably leave Greycliff soon to become a Sabre, Ser Leander.
"Oh! By the way," I hear him and I stop, turning my head to look at his distant figure. "Don't let your mother set you up with that fool, Isaac! He's a sack of shit. There is someone else better for you anyway!" He laughs. "Thank you…I'll keep that in mind!" I shout and shaking my head a little. I wonder…why am I so attracted to this fool?
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Leopards Earn First Win
Go Leopards!
March 4, 2013
Lafayette Photo Store
EASTON, Pa. - Lafayette women's tennis team notched its first win of the spring season, 6-1, over visiting Wagner on Saturday afternoon.
A pair of 6-0, 6-0 wins for the Leopards by first single's sophomore Amanda Kusnierz and fourth single's freshman Catherine Senopoulos powered Lafayette to a convincing victory Saturday. The Leopards received other singles victories from freshman Caroline Nixon and juniors Lucy Bass and Liza Blank.
Lafayette took all three doubles matches to earn the point. Bass and Senior Alison Dally won at first doubles, 8-2, while Kusnierz and Nixon swept second doubles, 8-0. Senopoulos and Blank handled their third doubles match, winning 8-2.
Lafayette returns to the court on Friday March 8, hosting St. Francis (Pa.) at 1 p.m.
Lafayette 6, Wagner 1
1. Amanda Kusnierz (LC) d. Nikki Arnold (WAG) 6-0, 6-0
2. Nicole Vukov (WAG) d. Jordyn Spellberg (LC) 6-2, 6-4
3. Caroline Nixon (LC) d. Rachel Jurgielewicz (WAG) 6-2, 6-1
4. Catherine Senopoulos (LC) d. Jenna Harris (WAG) 6-0, 6-0
5. Lucy Bass (LC) d. Julia Teichman (WAG) 6-3, 6-2
6. Liza Blank (LC) d. Aurora Brennan (WAG) 6-0, 6-1
1. Bass/Ali Dally (LC) d. Arnold/Teichman (WAG) 8-2
2. Kusnierz/Nixon (LC) d. Vukov/Harris (WAG) 8-0
3. Senopoulos/Blank (LC) d. Jurgielewicz/Lauren Hauer (WAG) 8-2
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Record July US troop death toll in Iraq
Saturday, August 4, 2007 - 10:00
While the US corporate media trumpeted on the last day of July that US troop fatalities in Iraq were the "lowest for eight months", according to the final Pentagon figure for the month, 80 US soldiers were killed — one less than the number killed in March. The July 2007 death toll was the highest of any July since the war began and was almost double the number killed in July 2006, when 43 US troops died. As of August 1, total US troop fatalities in Iraq since the March 19, 2003, invasion had reached 3659. As of June 30, a total of 54,100 US troops had been wounded since the invasion, with 35,600 of them requiring medical air evacuation out of Iraq.
From GLW issue 720
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Commentary Special
Jesus' Power over Death, Part 2
Matthew 9:23-26 February 22, 1981 2266
Free Download
Would you look with me at Matthew, chapter 9. Matthew, chapter 9. We're continuing in our examination of verses 18 through 26. Matthew 9, verses 18 through 26, and we've entitled this section, "Jesus' Power over Death." Nothing is more wonderful to us than to know that Christ has conquered death. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus came to “destroy him who had the power of death,” and as a result of that, to “deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage." Hebrews 2:14 and 15. In other words, the writer says that men live their entire lives subject to the bondage of the fear of death, but Christ has come to deliver them from that fear. Death is the specter that haunts every person's life. The longer you live, the more inevitably it looms in the future. To know that Christ has conquered that is the ultimate joy. For most of the world, they have no such knowledge and they fear death.
I suppose in my lifetime, the man who seemed to have it most together, the man who throughout the whole specter of the world's lifestyle, world's religion, throughout all of the demonstration of popularity and media and all of those things, the man who stands out as the man, at least in my lifetime, that the world thought had it most together, was Mahatma Gandhi. Seemed to be at peace. Seemed to have absolute tranquility of soul. Seemed to know nothing of fear. Fifteen years before Gandhi's death, he wrote this. "I must tell you in all humility that Hinduism as I know it entirely satisfies my soul. It fills my whole being, and I find a solace in the Bhagavad and Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount." Utterly at peace, utterly comfortable with his Hinduism. Just before his death, he wrote this. "My days are numbered. I am not likely to live very long, perhaps a year or a little more. For the first time in 50 years, I find myself in the slough of despond." Footnote: It was interesting; he must have been reading Pilgrim's Progress. Then he said this. "All about me is darkness, and I am desperately praying for light." Even Mahatma Gandhi, who seemed to have it all together as he began to face the inevitability of death, saw it all falling apart.
People do silly things when they think about dying, because of their fear. One man that I read about is a Turkish watchmaker who decided that he wanted to build himself a special grave with an eight-inch window on top and he planned to install a push-button, electric, alarm bell inside the grave; because, if he was buried alive by mistake, he could push the button and ring the cemetery's guard room. He also planned to have an electric light bulb in there, and he instructed the people who buried him to be sure they left the bulb on for seven days, came back, and if he was dead, they could then turn it out. In Brazil, an architect has designed a 39-story skyscraper cemetery. There are a lot of skyscrapers in Brazil. Most of them have living people in them. But this one is going to have bodies in it, with a capacity of 147,000 corpses. It has a heliport, so the bodies can be flown in quickly. There will be two churches and 21 chapels and comfortable beds for grieving friends. There will also be soothing and somber background music piped in 24 hours a day. This to deal with the incredible burial problem in the crowded portions of Brazil.
You know that Great Britain is the first country in the world to have more cremations than burials? They're facing the fact that there are no places left to put the bodies. In Japan, the graves are so crowded that only if you are in the imperial family can you be assured of or guaranteed a grave. Russia has the world's largest cemetery. It has one cemetery that contains 500,000 corpses. They just built a mausoleum in San Diego. In that one mausoleum, they have room for 70,000 bodies; and adjacent to it, they have a garden; and in that garden is a replica of the tomb from the garden in Jerusalem where they believe Jesus may have risen; and alongside the mausoleum will be that replica. It'll be empty, and the door is always open, so that you can be notified visually that Jesus' tomb is empty; and the message seems to be that those other tombs, wherein lies one who knows Him, will be emptied someday, as well.
Nonetheless, the earth is pockmarked with graves. They go down. They go up. They're everywhere. Death looms on the horizon of every individual's life. How marvelous it is to realize, then, that Jesus came to conquer death. If you're to look at John, chapter 5, that perhaps would be as good a place as any to get a focus on this, although we could discuss many passages. Just listen to several verses from John 5. Verse 21: "For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and giveth them life; even so the Son giveth life to whom He will." Verse 24: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life." Verse 26: "For as the Father hath life in Himself; so He hath given to the Son to have life in Himself." In chapter 11, He says, "I am the resurrection and the life: He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." In other words, Jesus claimed to have power over death. He said, "The Father has power over death, and He's given Me power over death." He also said, "Because I live, ye, too, shall live, also."
Now, the work of the Messiah was to conquer death, to remove the fear of death, to do. As the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15: To take the sting out of death, to take the victory out of the grave, the Messiah would come. Ultimately, the Messiah would bring about an eternal state, says Revelation 21:4, where “there will be no more death.” The Messiah would conquer death. If that's true, then anyone who claims to be the Messiah should demonstrate his power over death, right? Look with me at Matthew 11, verse 5. John the Baptist was concerned to know if Jesus was truly the Messiah, the Son of David, the Promised One; and so John sent a couple of his disciples to find out. And in verse 3 of Matthew 11, the disciples came and said, “Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another?” Are You the Messiah? Are You the Promised One? Are You the One John has been heralding? “And Jesus answered and said to them, 'You go and show John those things which you hear and see. [And what are they?] The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are [What?] raised up." Messianic credentials; that's how we know He is the King.
Now, Matthew wants us to understand this, so in chapter 8 and 9, Matthew has presented the miraculous power of the Messiah. He has shown us that Jesus had power over disease in chapter 8, verses 1 to 17. He has shown us that He had power over disorders, physical, spiritual, and moral disorders, in chapter 8, verse 23 through chapter 9, verse 17. And now in chapter 9:18 down through verse 35, he shows us that He has power over death. Disease, disorder, and death. He can give sight to the blind. He can give hearing to the deaf. He can make the dumb to speak, and He can raise the dead; and therein lies the credential of the Messiah. He can do, by way of preview, what He will do in His Kingdom and throughout eternity.
Now, in our text, beginning in verse 18, we focus on His power over death, the ultimate enemy, and there are three miracles here. The first one is the raising of a dead girl. The second one is giving sight to blind eyes, and the third, giving a voice to one who is dumb. In some sense, they all illustrate His power over death. In one case, He gives speech to a dead voice; in another, sight to dead eyes. And then pulling it all together, not only can He raise the parts of the body from deadness, but the whole of the body from deadness as He raises this little girl from death. Now, as we said two weeks ago when we began our study of verses 18 to 26, we not only want to focus on the miracle itself of the resurrection, but we want to watch Jesus, because we will learn here how He worked with people. We not only see the factors involved in His power as God manifest, but we also see the tenderness of His working with people, and that becomes abundantly clear as we look through the passage.
Now, let's review just briefly the pattern of Jesus in dealing with people, and this is the outline we want to follow. First of all, Jesus was accessible. Verse 18, look how it begins: "While He spoke these things unto them." Stop right there. You remember last time that we pointed out to you that Jesus was busy in conversation with the Pharisees, the followers of John the Baptist. Everywhere He went was a mass of humanity crowding and circling around Him. Always in the midst of a crowd, always surrounded by people; we see this throughout the flow of the book of Matthew. You start back in chapter 4, for example, verse 25, and it says, "And there followed Him great multitudes of people." And you come to chapter 8 and verse 1, and it says, "And when He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him." And you come to chapter 12, verse 15, "And great multitudes followed Him." And you can go all the way on to chapter 19 and just the second verse there, and it says, "And great multitudes followed Him." And in chapter 20, verse 29, "a great multitude followed Him." And in chapter 21, verse 8, a great multitude followed Him.
In other words, His whole life was in accessibility to people: answering questions, meeting needs, preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons. This is a marvelous principle, people. God is accessible. He's there. He can be found. He can be sought out. He is not the god of the pagans. He is not the god whose people cannot find Him, and the god of the Old Testament people to whom the prophet said, “Maybe he's on a vacation, maybe he's asleep. You better yell a little louder and wake him up." Our God is not so. When Jesus Christ came into the world, and He was God incarnate, God became accessible.
Second, He was not only accessible, He was available; and we move from the crowd to the individual in verse 18. It says, "There came a certain ruler." One man out of the crowd; and down in verse 20, "And behold, a woman." Out of the mass of everything, the focus is on a man and a woman, an individual. He's not just accessible, that is, you can attend His meetings. He's available. You can confront Him individually, and you can move into His life, and He into your life. He came to individual people. He touched a leper. He went home with a centurion who had a paralyzed servant. He touched a woman with a fever, and He dealt with a demon-possessed man. He healed a paralytic. And, here, He meets a, a father who has a dying daughter, and a woman with a severe hemorrhage. I mean, He's always available to the individual, and there are two things that that availability involves. One is need, and the other is faith. Where there, wherever there's deep need, wherever there's great faith: He's available.
Look at verse 18. It says, "There came a certain ruler," and the other gospels tell us he was the ruler of the synagogue. He was the epitome of the religious establishment. He was probably the leading citizen, the most respected and honorable and religious man. He was a part of the establishment that usually was identified against Christ; and, yet, in absolute desperation, because his daughter was dead, he came to Jesus. First time, as he came, the daughter was only dying; but, by the time Matthew picks up the account, the daughter's already dead; and the man is desperate. And he comes, therefore, out of deep need; but he also expresses great faith, because in verse 18, he says, "My daughter is even now dead, but come and lay Your hand on her, and she'll live." This is great faith. Great faith. He had a deep need and great faith, and therein lies the ground necessary for the meeting of a soul with God. Notice the middle of verse 18. He worshiped Him. He worshiped. This man had the faith to be saved. Worship is one of Matthew's favorite words.
It can be phony worship. It can be. In chapter 18 of Matthew's gospel and verse 26, I think it’s a phony worship. Remember, Jesus was telling a story about a man who owed so much he couldn't pay it. He came and he worshiped the master, and he said, "Oh, please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. I'll pay it all." And the man forgave him, and then that man turned right around to a man who owed him a little, tiny bit, and threw him in prison when he wouldn't pay. Man was a phony. He was a hypocrite. In verse 26, "The servant [that man] fell down and worshiped him, saying, 'Lord, have patience with me, and I'll pay thee all.'" And that worship was phony. So worship can be faked. It can be external. It can be self-serving. We find a selfish worship also in Matthew 20, verse 20, because there came the mother of James and John. James and John decided they want to sit on the right and left hand in the kingdom, and they wanted to be elevated above all the other disciples. And so they sent their mother, and she comes to Jesus. And it says she came “worshiping Him, and desiring a certain thing of Him." Now, that was a self-seeking worship. Worship can be phony or self-seeking, but it can also be real and genuine; and I believe when this man came, he came in a genuineness of heart.
If you were to look, for example, at Matthew 14, verse 33, I think you'd see a genuine worship. Jesus had walked on the water. And when He got to the boat, it says, when they were in the boat, the people who were there "worshiped Him, saying, 'Of a truth Thou art the Son of God.'" Now, there's the real stuff. True worship. You see it in 15, don't you? Chapter 15, verse 21: Jesus departs into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and there comes a Gentile woman and says, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter's grievously vexed with a demon.” He didn't answer her a word. He was going to give a dramatic illustration here. And the disciples said, “Send that woman away.” She's bugging us. “And He answered and said, ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'" He was showing them how important it was, first of all in His ministry, before He went to the Gentiles, to go to the Jews, and to offer the kingdom to the Jews. But she came persistently, verse 25 “and worshiped Him, saying, 'Lord help me.'" And I believe her worship is real and genuine; and, in a sense, His sort of ignoring her forces out the reality of her faith. "He answered and said to her, ‘It is not right to, to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs.’” Do I owe any obligation to you? A Gentile? “And she said, 'Truth, Lord.’” What do You mean by that? You're right. I don't deserve anything. I don't deserve anything. Now, there's a meek spirit. I don't deserve anything, but, “’Lord, even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.' Jesus answered and said to her, 'O woman, great is thy faith.'" Now, that's real worship. Not self-seeking. She knew she didn't deserve anything but the crumbs. So worship can be phony, can be self-seeking, or it can be real. And go back now to Matthew 9, and I think what you'll see here is real worship. "He worshiped Him and said, 'If you just lay Your hand on her, she'll live.'" He really believed that.
And back in chapter 8, remember in verse 8, the centurion said, "My servant is sick, and if You'll just say the word, he'll be well." And Jesus said that was the greatest faith He'd ever seen in Israel. But that man only believed that Jesus could heal. This man believes that he can raise the dead. He must believe that He is, in fact, the Christ of God.
By the way, this is more faith than the disciples showed on a lot of occasions. You know that? Chapter 8, the, the waves were rocking the boat. Verse 26: "He said unto them, 'Why are you afraid, O ye of [What kind of faith?] little faith?'" And He said that to them again and again. Chapter 14, verse 31; chapter 16, verse 8, He says, "O ye of little faith. O ye of little faith." Chapter 6 verse 30: "O ye of little faith."
If the disciples believed and had little faith, and this man has this kind of faith, he must have passed the point where his faith was adequate for redemption. I believe the man really believed. He had a deep need. He was desperate, and he had a great faith, and Jesus responds to great faith. Verse 19: "He rose and followed him," and so did the disciples. The other gospels add, and so did the whole crowd. So there's a big mass bulging through the little streets as they wind their way down to this fellow's house. Jesus was accessible, and He was available. He moves away from the mass to follow this one man who had a deep need.
But, thirdly, I love this, Jesus was also touchable. He was touchable. The crowd had heard. The individual man had worshiped. And now we meet a woman who touched. Verse 20: "Behold, a woman, who had been diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind Him,” and literally, grabbed or clutched the tassel hanging from His garment. She had had an issue of blood. That was some kind of a hemorrhage, some uniquely female bleeding problem, probably caused by a fibroid tumor. Could have been carcinoma, but it's likely that if it had, she would not have lived for twelve years. The Levitical law said that when a woman has an issue of blood, when she has this kind of a problem, her clothes are unclean, the bed she's on is unclean, anything she sits on is unclean, and anything she touches is unclean. She was put out of the synagogue, out of a family, out of a marriage relationship. She had been isolated for twelve years as an unclean person. A desperate condition: shut off from family, friends, fellowship, the synagogue, no one could touch her without being defiled. But she had heard about Jesus; and she, too, had a desperate need; and she, too, had faith. And she kept saying to herself, in verse 21, and the Greek says she kept saying it over and over, "If I can just touch His garment, I'll be well. The Man has so much power, that if I can just touch Him."
And a Jew had four little tassels hanging from an element on his robe, and they were made of blue, and they symbolized, according to Numbers 15 and Deuteronomy 22, they symbolized the identification with the law of God, and they marked a Jew as a Jew. And, as Jesus moved through the crowd, the little tassel would flap back and forth on His back; and she lunged out and grabbed that, and held on. Verse 22: What happened? Jesus turned around, and He saw her, and “He said, ‘Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee well.’ The woman was made well from that hour." He responded to that. He was touchable. He was, He was sensitive and responsive. You know, when Sir James Simpson, great saint, lay dying, a friend wished to comfort him and said to him, "Well, James, soon you will be able to rest on the bosom of Jesus." In his consummate humility, he said this, "Well, I don't know that I can quite do that, but I do think I can take hold of His garment." The woman didn't want to be exposed in her embarrassment and shame. She just wanted to reach out and touch, but she had the faith to believe that that was all that was necessary, because there was so much power. The ruler had somewhat of an inadequate motive. He really wanted his little girl alive. And the lady had somewhat of an inadequate faith. It was a little superstitious. But Jesus took them where they were, redeemed them both.
Now, look for a moment. When it says at the end of verse 21 that she thought she could touch Him, and then Jesus turned around, something happened in there that Matthew doesn't record. But Luke does, and I want you to see it in Luke chapter 8. There's a lot of interplay that, that the other gospels touch that we can't cover. But I, I want, at least, show you this. Verse 44 of Luke 8 says, and when she “came behind, and touched the border of His garment: immediately the issue of blood stanched," or stopped, was over. She was healed instantly, and I love this. And Jesus said, “Who grabbed Me? Who grabbed Me?” When everybody denied it, and “Peter and they that were with Him said, 'Master, the multitude crowd Thee and press Thee, and sayest Thou, 'Who touched Me?’” You got to be kidding. You're being shoved and pushed and jostled all the way down the street, and You're saying, “'Who touched Me?'"
But Jesus knew the difference between the jostling of the fickle mob and the grasping of a faithful soul. "Who touched Me?" And I love this in verse 46, "Jesus said, 'Somebody has touched Me, [Somebody grabbed Me.] for I perceive that power is gone out of Me.'" It's an incredible statement. You know what it tells me? That Jesus was so much the channel of the will of the Father that the Father could heal through Him before He even knew who was involved. When He said, "I came to do the will of Him that sent Me," He meant that. He felt the power go. He was touchable, so sensitive to the one who touched. He knows the difference between somebody who bangs up against Him and is curious, somebody who's a thrill seeker, and somebody who hangs on in desperation and faith. He knows the heart to connect up with. He knows the person to pull out of the crowd, and say, "You're the one."
Let me take you to a fourth thought. Not only was He accessible, available, and touchable, but He was impartial. He was impartial. When He turned around to get involved with this one woman, He showed that He was so impartial. He could have said, "Look, lady, um, could, could you let go of My tassel? I'm, I'm trying to get down to the ruler's house." As somebody said, "Don't hassle my tassel. I'm trying to, I got, I got this, listen, if we can get this guy converted, see, this guy runs the synagogue. I mean, we can have a revival in this town. I mean, please let go. I mean I got to be on My way here. This, this is very serious." No, you see, God has never looked for the superstars and the bright lights and the famous people. He's always been content with folks like us. The Bible says that the prophet Isaiah predicted when the Messiah would come, He would preach the gospel to the—What?—poor. And Paul said, "Not many noble, and not many mighty, but He's chosen the base and the weak and the ignoble and the foolish things." I mean, we are a motley crew, you know that? Really.
I was reading this week a very interesting book called Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, written by Dr. Paul Brand and Phil Yancey. It's a book you ought to read. Tremendous. In one section of it, he talks about how the people of God are such an unlikely bunch. And he quotes from novelist Frederick Buechner, who said this: "Who could've predicted that God would choose not Esau, the honest and reliable, but Jacob, the trickster and heel? Who could have predicted that God would put his finger on Noah, who hit the bottle? Or on Moses, who was trying to beat the rap in Midian for braining a man in Egypt. And if it weren't for the honor of the thing, He'd just as soon let Aaron go back and face the music. Who could have predicted that God would choose the prophets who were a ragged lot, mad as hatters, most of them."
And then Paul Brand adds, "The exception seems to be the rule. The first humans God created went out and did the only thing God asked them not to do. The man he chose to head a new nation known as God's people tried to pawn off his wife on an unsuspecting Pharaoh; and the wife, herself, when told at the ripe old age of 91 that God was ready to deliver the son He had promised her, broke into rasping laughter in the face of God. Rahab, a harlot, became revered for her great faith; and Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, went out of his way to break every proverb he so astutely composed.”
Even after Jesus, the pattern continued. The two disciples who did the most to spread the Word after His departure, John and Peter, were the two He had rebuked most often for petty squabbling and muddleheadedness. And the apostle Paul, who wrote more books than any other Bible writer, was selected for the task while kicking up dust whirls from town to town sniffing out Christians to torture. Jesus had nerve in trusting the high-minded ideals of love and unity and fellowship to this group. No wonder cynics have looked at the church and sighed, "If that group of people is supposed to represent God, I'll quickly vote against Him." Or as Nietzsche expressed it, "His disciples will have to look more saved if I'm to believe in their Savior."
We are a motley crew, aren't we? The ignoble and the weak and the foolish. We all have this in common: we have a sense of desperate need, and we have faith to believe. So Jesus is impartial. "God is, [says the apostle], no respecter of [What?] persons." There's neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, bond or free, rich or poor. All are one.
So Jesus Christ pulls everything to a halt to deal with the outcast woman; and as He deals with her, He doesn't deal with her from a distance. Watch what He says to her. Verse 22 of Matthew 9: "Daughter." Daughter? Wait a minute, that's so intimate. That's so personal. That's so familial. That's so tender. That has so much warmth, so much affection. Daughter. That just pulls her in. "Be of good comfort.” Be comforted, daughter. What tenderness. What impartiality. Then He says this. I love this. "Your faith has made you well.” And the woman was well from that hour. Now, wait a minute. She'd already been healed. This is in addition to that. She was healed the minute she touched, but when He pulled her out, He said, "There's something else. Your healing didn't have anything to do with your faith, not really. That was a sovereign act of God." If you study the gospels and the record of Christ, you will find multitudes upon multitudes of people who were healed, and it says nothing about whether they believed or not. Did the little girl who was raised from the dead have faith? Afraid not. How about the paralyzed servant of the centurion who was healed, did he have faith? No. In fact, you can go through the gospels and find many, many, many places where people were healed, and there is no indication that they particularly had faith. Healing was a sovereign act on God's part as Jesus demonstrated His deity, and healing is still a sovereign act on God's part. But in addition to the physical healing, He said, "Your faith has," and He did not use the word iaomai, which means to be made well physically. He used the word sodzo, which is the New Testament word to be saved. "'Your faith has saved you,' and she was saved from that hour." Yes, there's a sense in which she was saved from the horrors of the disease, but there is also a redemptive issue here. She was saved. There was a more than a physical healing.
Look at Mark 10. Let me see if I can demonstrate this to you. This, to me, is a thrilling truth. Mark 10:46; and we're going to draw this thing together. Mark 10:46:
"They came to Jericho: As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great number of people [as always], blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the wayside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, 'Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!' [He'd identified Him by His Messianic title.] And many charged him that he should hold his peace. [Be quiet, Bartimaeus.] But he cried the more a great deal, 'Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!' [This was the cry of his great faith.] And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man, saying unto him, 'Be of good comfort, rise; He
calleth thee.' And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, 'What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?' The blind man said unto Him, 'Lord, that I might receive my sight.' And Jesus said unto him, 'Go thy way; Thy faith hath [and He uses sodzo] saved thee.' And immediately he received his sight, and he followed [Whom?] Jesus in the way."
I think, in that case, the word sodzo is used to indicate that, not only was the man healed, but the man also received salvation. There was a saving element—his soul—if he had that kind of faith, that was sufficient to save his soul if he believed that this was the Lord and this was the Son of David.
Look at Luke 7 verse 44, tremendous account. Thrilling, and I want to show you this is a most important parallel. Luke 7:44: There's a woman. And it says in verse 44:
"Jesus turned to the woman, [and you'll get the story as we go] and said, 'Simon, Simon, do you see this woman? I entered into your house, You gave Me no water for My feet: but [she washed My feet] she has washed My feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. You gave Me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in has not ceased to kiss My feet. My head with oil you did not anoint: but this woman has anointed My feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much: But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.' And He said unto her, 'Thy sins are forgiven.'"
Listen, this woman demonstrated so much love and so much worship and so much respect for Christ that it was enough to bring her redemption, and He forgave her sin. And when they were eating, that were eating with Him “began to say within themselves, 'Who is this that forgiveth sins also? [Who can do this?]' And He said to the woman, [Watch this, same identical phrase used in the healings that we've read before.] thy faith hath saved thee.'" There is no healing here. There is only the forgiveness of sin; and that phrase, with the word sodzo in it in the Greek, is used to speak of her salvation. That's why I say we have to see that aspect when the phrase uses the word sodzo.
Luke 17, you remember the story? Ten lepers came to Jesus. "He saw them. He said, ‘ the priests.’ [In verse 14 of Luke 17: “ the priests.”] It came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed." Now watch. Ten came, ten were sent, ten were cleansed. That is katharizo, katharizo, to be washed, cleansed. "One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned around, and with a loud voice glorified God, fell down on his face at His feet [the feet of Jesus], giving Him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, 'Were not there ten cleansed? Where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, except this stranger.’” Just one came back? What'd He say to that one? "Arise, go thy way: Thy [Same phrase, thy] faith hath [and He uses sodzo] saved thee." It's one thing to be katharizo. It's something else to be sodzo, see? There is a cleansing of ten. There is a saving of one. Of one. So when the word is used for saving, it's unfortunate the English Bible doesn't make that distinction, because I believe it implies a redemptive aspect. As I said before, faith is not necessary for healing. Do you know there are people who have diseases who get well who aren't Christians? And there are Christians who die. That is a sovereign thing. Sometimes God does honor our faith in healing; but always does He honor our faith in saving. Well, you see, Jesus loved people. He was accessible.
You can turn back to Matthew 9 now. He was accessible. He was available. He was touchable. He was impartial. Little outcast lady was as important to Him as the ruler of the synagogue. God deliver us from playing to the expensive seats—You know?—and ignoring the needy.
In the book A Night to Remember, Walter Lord tells about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, I think, think it was in the month of April. And when it hit, The American, which is the New York paper, the headline said, John Jacob Astor, millionaire, drowns. Other people also drowned, but that's the way it is with the world. Only the rich and the famous get the press. Not so with Christ. If you learn anything from this, will you not only learn how powerful He is, but will you learn how accessible, available, touchable, and impartial He is? That's how it is with God. That's how it should be with those who represent Him.
And I want to close with this. Fifthly, He was powerful. He was powerful. He was powerful. We can be the first four, but it gets a little sticky here. I can sympathize with you and hold out my hand to hold onto yours; but if you're sick, I can't heal you; and if you're dead, I can't raise you. This is what sets Him apart.
Verse 23, I just love this. "And Jesus came to the ruler's house." Now, the interlude has taken so long, the girl's dead. "And He came and He saw the musicians and the people making a noise." Now wait a minute, this is, this is a girl dead. What's all this racket? You know, have you ever gone to a funeral home. Somebody's dead. I mean it's so quiet in there. Everybody walks around whispering, black suits, very quiet. You go sneaking down little halls and little rooms, little quiet caskets, little organs playing; very quiet. Somebody drops something, you just, you know, oh. Our, our culture is that you get real quiet. Their culture, you get really noisy; real noisy, racket all over the place, people making a whole bunch of noise. Now, let me tell you what went on. Three basic things went on in a Jewish funeral. By the way, the girl's been dead long enough for the funeral to start, so they knew she was very sick, and they've already been on call ready to move in. So you have professional mourners and they came in. They were professional shriekers. They screamed and shrieked and wailed and all this. But let me tell you the three things that were part. First of all, there was the rending of garments. You were supposed to rip your clothes. That was symbolic of your grief, and they had 39 different rules and regulations on how to rip your clothes, according to the Talmud. You had to do it while you were standing up. You had to do it over your heart or near your heart. If you were a mother and father, it had to be right over your heart. If you were not the mother or father, it could be anywhere near. And you had to rip it big enough to stick your fist through. And then you had to leave the rip for seven days. And for the next 30, you could stitch it with big stitches, but you couldn't sew it permanently, so people would know you still felt bad. And in order for women not to expose themselves in an indiscreet manner by ripping their clothes, they would rip their undergarment and then wear it backwards. And there were 39 different things.
So here it all begins. Everybody is somewhere ripping their clothes. And believe me, this would have been a big funeral, because this was a very important man. And they're all in there tearing their clothes. The second thing was the wailing, and the professional women would come in and begin to wail. They would have been paid, and they would've learned the domestic history of the whole family, so they would be bringing up the names of everybody who had ever died in that family, and erupting old sorrows long ago buried. "Oh, remember Alice. Oh, remember Charlie," and would go on and on. They would bring everything up, and they would wail and shriek and scream and make all this racket. Trying to touch every tender cord they possibly could for every person who'd ever died.
The third thing were, you'll notice in verse 23, the musicians. Flute players. They had all different kinds of flutes, but they'd come in and play flutes. The Talmud says this, "The husband is bound to bury his dead wife and to make lamentations in mourning for her according to the custom of all countries; and also the very poorest among the Israelites will not allow her less than two flutes and one wailing woman." I mean even if you were in abject poverty, you had to hire one wailing woman and two flutes. Now, if you're wealthy, the Talmud said, it should be in accord with your wealth.
"And He said to them, 'Go away. Get out.” The Prince of Peace arrives. He says, “Go away."
"Why? This is proper. The Talmud requires all this. We're doing what we're supposed to do."
"Go away." Reason? "The girl is not dead. She's sleeping."
"What do you mean?" Look what it says at the end of verse 24: They laughed in His face. “What is He saying, the girl is not dead? Doesn't He know?”
Of course He knows she's dead. Been reported already that she's dead, and He knows He's going to raise her from the dead. Of course He knows she's dead, but what He's saying is, "You cannot treat her death as death. You must treat it as sleep, because it is so temporary.” See? That's what He's saying: “You have to treat her as if she's just asleep.” And the implication is, "Because I'm going to raise her from the dead," and that's why they laughed. They laughed in His face: "He's going to wake her up." That'll tell you a little bit about the fact that they were paid mourners—right?—when their weeping turned to laughing that fast. They could cry for this child, or they could laugh at Jesus in an instant; and so they mocked Him in the face. In fact, the verb means they laughed hard. They really laughed hard, as the scornful laughter of a superior who laughs over someone who is stupid. By the way, that verb is only used in this story, and it is used in this story three times. It is the kind of scornful laughter reserved for mocking a fool. Only a fool would think He could raise her from the dead.
And they had seen other miracles, you see, this crowd in Capernaum, but they still didn't believe. Just what Jesus said, "If they don't believe Moses and the prophets, they won't believe the One raised from the dead." But, anyway, He said, “Stop. Go away.” And they laughed in His face. Verse 25, "When the people were put forth [He got rid of them.], He went in, took her by the hand...,” and the other gospel record says, "He said to her, ‘Talitha kum.’” Know what that means? Little girl, arise. Little girl, arise. "Took her by the hand, and the girl arose." You know what it says? It says, "The parents [in the other gospels] were astonished." And Jesus told them not to tell anybody, but they couldn't resist it, and they just put more pressure on Him as His enemies moved in closer.
Luke 8:55 has an important word to add to this. It says, "And her spirit came again." That means that she was truly dead, "and her spirit came to her again, and she arose." You know, Jesus didn't have to touch the little girl, didn't have to reach out His hand to her. Could have just said the word, but it is the way of God to be tender. Do you understand that? It is the way of God to be gentle. It is the way of God to be affectionate and loving. It is the way of God's people to greet one another with a holy kiss as an extension of His affection toward them.
And verse 26 says, "The fame of this went abroad into all that land." You know what they said about Him? "He has power over disease. He has power over disorders. He has power over death. He can redeem." And so Matthew reaches a pinnacle in his presentation of the power of Jesus Christ. "He is the One,” says John, “who holds the keys of hell and death." Great truth. Beloved, we have no need to fear death, none at all. The poet put it this way. I love this. "No longer must the mourners weep, nor call departed children dead. For death is transformed into sleep, and every grave becomes a bed." As a young man, D. L. Moody was called upon suddenly to preach a funeral sermon. He decided that he would hunt the gospels to try to find one of Christ's funeral sermons, but he searched in vain. He found that every time Christ attended a funeral, He broke it up by raising the person from the dead; and so He never gave a funeral sermon. When the dead heard His voice, they immediately sprang to life.
We should rejoice in death, because we have conquered death. “He will not leave His Holy One to see corruption.” He will show us the path of life. In His presence, His fullness of joy, and at His right hand, are treasures forevermore. I think Arthur Brisbane captured it for me when I look at a funeral. Arthur Brisbane wanted to demonstrate what a funeral was like, so he pictured a crowd of grieving caterpillars, all wearing black suits; and all these caterpillars are crawling along mourning; and they're carrying the corpse of a cocoon to its final resting place. The poor distressed caterpillars, weeping; and above them is fluttering around this incredibly beautiful butterfly, looking down in utter disbelief. Christ gives us hope.
Two weeks ago, when I preached the first half of this sermon, it touched somebody's heart; and they wrote me this letter:
"Dear John, My family and I have had a tragic loss. My younger brother was shot and killed Thursday afternoon. He was a professional auto repossessor for the last four years, first working in the Valley, and then in Los Angeles. He had just decided to move his work back to the Valley, because he felt doing the type of work he did, that Los Angeles was not a safe area. He had been working in the Valley since last week and seemed to feel much safer.
"On Thursday afternoon, he and his partner went to an address in Burbank, the city where our family has lived for the past 14 years, to repossess a car that the owner had failed to make his payments on. My brother's partner went up to the door where the owner of the vehicle lived to tell the man that his car was being repossessed unless he could make a payment on the spot. The man allegedly said, 'Take the car,' so my brother and his partner proceeded to take the vehicle when, suddenly, the man came out of his apartment with a rifle. My brother immediately told the man that there would be no problem. They wouldn't take the car. The man then fired one shot from the gun, hitting my brother in the chest and instantly killing him.
"I and my family are having a rough time dealing with this incident, even though we all know there was a reason why Jesus allowed this to happen. Your sermon today on Jesus' power over death was timely and brought great comfort to myself and my two sisters, who are both Christians; but we were attending Grace today for the first time. My brother was a wonderful, warm human being, who would help anyone, be it a stranger or a friend, in a time of need. He was one of those people that would stop to help someone who was stranded in their car, even though he might be on his way to work. Sometimes I feel like everything is okay, and that I'm at peace knowing he's with the Lord. But then there are those other times when all I can think about is my brother lying in the street, and I'd give anything to have him back. But I know that he will be back when Jesus raises the dead, and I have that joy to look forward to. I thank you and the Lord for the message today and the knowledge that my brother is at peace. In Jesus' name."
It's a great hope, isn't it? It's the only thing that can sustain, to know that He has power over death. Let's pray.
Thank You, Father, for our time this morning, for how You've ministered to us in the Word. Meet every need in this place. For those who do not know You, may this be the day they open their heart to believe. For those who do, may there be a deepening of commitment. For those You're calling to join and unite with Your church, may they respond today, be obedient.
While your heads are bowed, just in a final second, if you don't know Christ, right where you sit, just open your heart to Him. Invite Him to come in and save you and forgive your sin and show you His mercy and salvation, give you victory over death. He'll do that.
Father, bring those that You would have to come and touch every life with the great hope that is ours, because You have the power over death. Bring us together again tonight in anticipation that You're going to speak to us as we open up our heart to share the things that You've been doing there. Thank You for this day and this people. We give You all the glory. In Christ's name. Amen.
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PRO Tips
Got game? A pro's tips for work-life balance
Although she's transitioning from competition to corporate appearances, LPGA golfer Nancy Scranton stays busy. Along the way, she's learned a few tricks for an active lifestyle she shares with e-PlanProfessor readers.
Gearing up and winding down
e-PlanProfessor editor Jim Nichols sat down to chat with Nancy Scranton, a Humana-sponsored golfer on the LPGA TOUR. Nancy discussed balancing life on the road with twin 4-year-olds, staying competitive and maintaining a camera-ready look. Here's what she had to say...
Last year, how many tournaments did you play?
These tournaments — you play to make the cut, and then play the rest of the tournament ... it's going to be more than four days isn't it?
Oh yeah, it's seven days pretty much. Monday is your travel day, Tuesday practice round, Wednesday, Pro Am, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday hopefully it's pretty much a full week of tournament.
The best days are Thursday through Sunday, when you're in the tournament. It's the preparation, all the hard work, and all the traveling that makes it tough.
How many months of the year were you on the road?
When I first started on tour, we had tournaments in January and would end up having maybe one the first week of December, so it was kind of a year-long thing for a while. They kind of shortened the schedule a little bit in the last several years. And last year we had two events in Hawaii in February, so we were in gone in February.
Your husband is with you on those trips, isn't he?
He was. He's a media official on the PGA TOUR, and so he traveled with me and caddied for me. It would have been absolutely impossible without him. There's just no way, with the kids, I have 4½-year-old twins. We've been traveling with them since they were about 3½-months-old and there's just no way I could have done it without him.
Can you describe an average day on tour?
With a tournament round, it depends, the first two days - Thursday and Friday - you have one late day and one early day. You kind of hope its early, late, because when it's late, early (arriving home late, start playing early) you don't have much turn-around time, especially when you want to get back to the hotel and take care of the kids and then you have to get up early the next day.
We'd drop the kids off two hours before our tee time - that's what we were allowed with our child care. Then we'd get to the golf course, I would get something to eat and then always went in to the fitness area to stretch and do some warm-up, usually with about 45-50 minutes before I teed off. I'd go to the putting green and putted for a while and then just warm up hitting some balls, then off to the tee.
Afterwards, I guess you'd have to do all of that in reverse?
Pretty much, if you're playing late, you don't do much unless you really felt like you needed to work on something specific, you'd spend just a little bit of time maybe on the range, or a putting green, or chipping.
But then you have to think, if you had a late tee time on Thursday, you're going to have an early one on Friday so then it starts all over again at 5:30 the next morning. The late tee times are almost harder, a lot of times we're in a hotel room and it's hard to entertain the kids in a hotel room.
I can only imagine.
Yeah, it makes a big difference. We could put the kids to bed in the living room, or in the bedroom, depending on how old they were. We used to travel with two pack-and-plays, portable cribs, my golf clubs, and all the stuff.
You're one of "those" people at the airport, huh?
Well, I'm pretty particular about my clothing and I always took quite a bit of pride in that.
You know if you look good, you feel better about yourself and then you play better. So I think that's really important and I always had lipstick in my pocket or Mark was carrying it for me and I would wear a hat and it kind of helped my hair stay neater.
You mentioned the lipstick. What are three most important products you carry on the course to make you sure you shine on the course? In other words, what's in your golf bag ... sunscreen?
Oh absolutely, sunscreen and lipstick I'll always have ... and ponytail holders. I always have water too and something to snack on. A lot of times it would be nuts or trail mix, a banana. You know you're out there for a long time and you lose your concentration easily. You need to eat a little bit here and there and certainly drink water. Lipstick and sunscreen, always - because lipstick is like sunblock.
Having watched golf, it's not just distant, panoramic shots. A lot of times they are right up on your face.
You betcha. Waterproof mascara.
With that in mind, you're under the microscope, so to speak. How do you motivate or de-stress before the game so you're putting your best self forward?
The stretching really helps me out in the warm-up and I have a little alone time. That calms me a lot. When you're out on the course: deep breathing - you regulate your breathing and you concentrate on taking deep breaths. It can get shallow out there and that's not really a good thing.
You mentioned the stretching, what else is part of your exercise routine?
The stretching is very important for golf. I had shoulder surgery in 1996, so I have had to constantly work at keeping my shoulder strong. When I could find the time - if the kids were not on the road with me - I would definitely do some free weights and some core work and balance work and some cardio.
How do you pamper yourself?
If I could break away to go get a pedicure or manicure that would be really good. If I could say, Mark, I am going out for an hour or so and get a pedicure or manicure. It's not really pampering, it's almost a necessity, but a massage and a lot of times it's part pampering and part necessity. Those are my biggest.
What's something about you that would surprise people?
It's pretty shocking to me, I played on the tour for 24 years and then had twins when I was 43. It's great, I was ready to start winding down with my career and not playing competitively as much, just doing corporate outings and things like that. That's what I feel my strength is anymore. I have had a lot of experiences out there and enjoy that part of the deal.
Right, and I'm sure with twins the priorities shift?
They do and it's nice to be able to do that. When I turned 40 I was playing some of the best golf of my career. I was glad I didn't have to make those choices then.
It's tough for moms on tour, especially when the kids get to school age, you have decisions to make and it's hard divide your priorities like that and be successful at anything.
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application/pdfSystem Support ... During Production Runs.pdf (679Kb)
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Title:System Support for Improving Software Dependability During Production Runs
Author(s):Qin, Feng
Subject(s):computer science
Abstract:As hardware performance and dependability have dramatically improved in the past few decades, the software dependability issues are becoming increasingly important. Unfortunately, many studies show that software bugs, which inevitably slip through various bug detection methods and even the strictest testing before releasing, can greatly affect software dependability during production runs. To improve software dependability during production runs, this dissertation proposes to address software bugs at multiple levels by leveraging support from the underlying hardware, the OS kernel, and the middle-layer runtime. The proposed multi-level defenses address software bugs and their effects at different stages of program execution. The first-level defense detects software bugs once they are triggered. The detection at the earliest stage can effectively prevent further propagation of errors that are caused by the software bugs. It would be perfect if we could detect all the software bugs at the first-level defense. However, some bugs may still slip through the first-level defense and may be exploited by security attacks. The second-level defense is to detect the exploitation of software bugs in order to control the system damage caused by the potentially exploited bugs. Due to the limitation of the tools or methods deployed in the first-level and second-level defenses, some bugs may still escape them. Additionally, without any further actions for the detected bugs or exploitations at the previous two levels of defenses, what the target system can do is to shut down itself to prevent potential damages, thus is unavailable to users. At this point, the third-level defense recovers the program from software bugs and their effects, thus providing non-stop services. In short, the multi-level defenses complement each other to effectively address software bugs during production runs. More specifically, in each level of defense, this dissertation proposes a novel low-overhead method to address software bugs during production runs by leveraging support from the hardware, OS, or the runtime. In the first-level defense, this dissertation proposes a low-overhead tool, called SafeMem, to detect memory leaks and memory corruption bugs, two major forms of software bugs that severely threaten system availability and security. It does not require any new hardware extensions. Instead, SafeMem makes a novel use of existing ECC memory technology and exploits intelligent dynamic memory usage behavior analysis to detect memory leak and corruption bugs. The experiments with seven real-world applications show that SafeMem detects all tested bugs with very low overhead (only 1.6%-14.4%). In the second-level defense, this dissertation proposes a low-overhead, software-only information flow tracking system, called LIFT, to detect the exploitation of software bugs. Without requiring any hardware changes, LIFT minimizes runtime overhead by exploiting dynamic binary translation and optimizations for detecting various types of security attacks. More specifically, LIFT aggressively eliminates unnecessary dynamic information tracking, coalesces information checks, and efficiently switches between target programs and instrumented information flow tracking code. The experiments with two real-world server applications, one client application and eighteen attack benchmarks show that LIFT can effectively detect various types of security attacks. LIFT also incurs very low overhead, only 6.2% for server applications, and 3.6 times on average for seven SPEC INT2000 applications. The proposed dynamic optimizations effectively reduce the overhead by a factor of 5-12 times. In the third-level defense, this dissertation proposes an innovative technique, called Rx, which can quickly recover programs from many types of software bugs, both deterministic and non-deterministic. The idea, inspired from allergy treatment in real life, is to roll back the program to a recent checkpoint once failure, triggering or exploitation of software bugs that are detected at the first two level of defenses, and then re-execute the program in a modified environment. This idea is based on the observation that many bugs are correlated with their execution environments, and therefore can be avoided by removing the ``allergen'' from the environment. Rx requires few to no modification to applications and provides programmers with additional feedback for bug diagnosis. The experiments with four server applications that contain six bugs of various types show that Rx can survive all the six software failures and provide transparent fast recovery within 0.017-0.16 seconds, 21-51 times faster than the whole system program restart approach for all but one case (CVS).
Issue Date:2006-08
Genre:Technical Report
Other Identifier(s):UIUCDCS-R-2006-2742
Date Available in IDEALS:2009-04-21
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Don't Scare the Children: Giving Advice on Graduate School
December 2, 2012 - 8:55pm
Katy Meyers is an Anthropology PhD Student at Michigan State University and a founding editor of GradHacker. You can follow her on twitter at @bonesdonotlie.
I've attended three grad schools and looked at about a half dozen when I was searching for my school. I met with lots of different grad students and have gone to three department mandatory "introduction to grad school" seminars. I heard a lot of great advice as well as a lot of bad advice when I was in the process of looking and getting introduced to this grad lifestyle. I'm definitely not an expert on what you should tell someone who is interested in grad school, but I've picked up a few good tips from both getting and giving advice.
1. Don't scare them: There are some grad students out there who tend to be angry, whether its because they didn't get funded or their proposals weren't accepted or something else. Having an undergrad ask your advice is not the time to vent your frustration at a personal problem with grad school. It is fine to warn them about certain things, but don't try to scare them away. The worst interaction I had with a grad student who was giving me advice was when she spent an hour at a coffee shop with me complaining about how awful her life was in grad school. Vent frustration elsewhere.
2. Be positive but truthful: It's great if you love your department and want to share this with someone asking your advice, but also be honest. Don't sugarcoat the experience too much. We don't want to scare them, but we don't want them to be shocked when they find out that this isn't an extension of undergrad, and that their free grad student lunch was just a fluke while they were visiting. Be enthusiastic, be positive about your experience, but its important to be realistic as well.
3. Don't gossip: I remember walking up to a grad student at a university that won't be named to ask about their experience with a professor who would have been my potential advisor had I gone there. The student rolled their eyes and proceeded to give me a massive list of reasons not the involve myself with the professor and why all the students who worked with this professor weren't as good as the others. Don't do this. You don't need to share insider knowledge or gossip about the department. Like #2, err towards being positive and truthful about interactions. Never start a sentence with "well, I heard that Prof X did this..." You are a representative of your department and grad school in general, so a little professionalism is always good.
4. Take the time to give advice: This is someone who may be your colleague and peer one day, so take the time to answer questions and meet with potential grad students. It really doesn't take up that much time, it looks good for your department and your personal image with the department, and it may pay off for you in the future. Visiting grad schools and asking questions can be a little intimidating. Remember your experience, and try to help out those just starting the process.
I also always suggest that they take a look at GradHacker. It's not just self-promotion; it is a great way for them to see what grad students are worried about, thinking about, dealing with and trying to accomplish in their professional and personal lives. Grad school is a complete lifestyle change, and helping them understand that it has both positives and negatives is something our authors illustrate extremely well!
Do you give advice to future grad students? Do you have any advice for grad students who are asked about their experience, their program, their department or grad school in general? Let us know in the comments below!
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We Don't Need No Adaptive Learning
April 4, 2013 - 2:36pm
Am I crazy if I want less innovation in education?
In a Thursday, April 4 column, Peter Stokes, “the executive director of postsecondary innovation in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University,” argues that “adaptive learning” is showing significant promise in enabling higher education to “unshackle” itself from the “Iron Triangle of cost, quality, and access.”
According to Stokes, adaptive learning is “an environment where technology and brain science collaborate with big data to carve out customized pathways through curriculums for individual learners and free up teachers to devote their energies in more productive and scalable ways.”
I’ll be honest. I’m not 100% sure what that means. When I read opinion pieces putatively about education that use words like “big data,” “productive,” and “scalable,” the hairs on the back of my neck go up since these are words I associate with business and marketing. Education? Not so much.
To Stokes, adaptive learning is a promising alternative to what he calls the “brute force model of delivery” where courses and curriculum are delivered in a “one-size-fits-all manner,” and those “who can’t keep up are simply left behind.”
To illustrate his point, Stokes invokes a colleague who told him over lunch, “with no small amount of pride” that he teaches to only the top 10% of students, the rest of them be damned. This professor seems so ubiquitous that I can't believe I haven't run in to him during my 13 years working at four different universities. Fortunately for Stokes, he found himself proximate to this most weightless of strawmen to launch his argument.
As best I can figure, at its heart, “adaptive learning” is software that adapts to the inputs of the student. As the software susses out a problem, it delivers a response or lesson appropriate to what the student needs to know. It figures out where the student is and meets them there.
As I read Peter Stokes’ column, or the simultaneously published article by Paul Fain on a report (partially produced by Stokes) on the current landscape of adaptive learning, I grew more and more mystified as to why there’s so much excitement over these things that are still in their nascent stages when we already have something that already does the job really really well.
I call it “adaptive teaching.”
As it happens, it’s research paper week in our offices. My shared corridor is filled with academic writing students waiting to meet individually with their instructors. Myself, I’ve been talking to every one of my students in 15-minute intervals over the course of three days. Each one of them is working on a piece of writing designed from their own interests, targeted to a specific audience that needs it. Their topics range from an exploration of cultural perceptions of stay-at-home fathers, to whether or not Joss Whedon is a feminist writer, to the ethical dimensions of nanotechnology in medicine.
I won’t deny that it’s tiring and difficult to consider 40 different research projects and offer individualized guidance on how best to move forward, but it’s what the job demands at this point of the semester, so I do it, just like all my colleagues are doing it.
Everyone who steps into our offices is at a different place in terms of their skills, their interests, their progress in the course. I have some students who’ve never written a research paper, while others are graduating seniors (despite this being a 100-level course).
Stokes believes that our “brute force” methods are leaving some students behind, but it depends on what you mean by “behind.” Certainly, some students will go further than others, receiving A’s for their work, but those that receive B’s or C’s are also learning. In fact, depending on where they started, they may have learned “more.” More importantly, they have experienced that learning is not something with a discrete beginning and ending, but an ongoing process, a process over which they have control. If they are behind, it is adaptive teaching that helps them “catch up.”
One of my goals for my composition students is to become what I call “self-regulating” writers, that is to know when they don’t know something and to then seek out the necessary knowledge or information. This could be something basic like comma rules, or it could mean they spend time considering their audience’s needs, attitudes, and knowledge to find the right tone or choice of words or illustrative examples for whatever they’re writing.
What I want them to understand, more than anything is that learning is a choice, an act of personal agency.
Adaptive learning, as I understand it, turns learning into a program we navigate, the software telling us what we need every step of the way. We wait for the software to tell us what's next. It removes agency from the equation, telling us what we “need,” rather than letting the individual ask and then answer their own questions.
Adaptive learning doesn’t feel like learning to me. It definitely doesn’t feel like the kind of learning that’s going to put people into the world who can adapt to the pace of change. What are students going to do when they run out of software? The product is the process. An educational process that is automated (even if customized via adaptive learning) results in automatons.
I hope that isn’t the point.
Adaptive learning is an example of what writer and scholar Evgeny Morozov has disdainfully labeled, “solutionism,” the notion that technology can provide a “benign” solution to our problems, even seemingly intractable problems like obesity and poverty.
Solutionism is poised to run rampant in higher education. We see it in adaptive learning. We see it in EdX’s recent announcement that they will be rolling out software for computer grading of essays, something about which I will have many additional thoughts in a future post.
Let’s stop pretending that any of this has to do with concern about learning. This is business. Look at the people behind the white paper on which Peter Stokes worked, Education Growth Advisors. These people are from marketing research, banking, consulting, private equity. Higher education is simply a ripe growth industry for these people. They are in the business of selling products that solve “problems.” If they have to invent the problem, so be it.
But when it comes to teaching and learning, we don’t really have a problem, at least not a problem the solutionists are seeking to solve. We are very well aware of what makes for effective learning.
Ask yourselves, what made a difference in your life as a student, and invariably the answer is a teacher or teachers. At some point, we’ve all had teachers that inspire, that light the fire, that turn us into adaptive learners with no need for software. The more we let our curriculum be driven by big data that seeks to smooth the curve of differences, the less likely we are to be exposed to the teaching that hits our particular nerves. The higher education solutionists seem to think that technology can solve the messy business of being human. But why would we want to?
It's just business, baby. If we're simply talking about hiring and empowering teachers, there's no pie for private equity or marketing research to take a piece of.
Software will always be a distant second in engaging students. If we want students to learn, the only investment we really need is in the human capital of people who teach them.
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2015 Computer Science Internships in Los Angeles, CA
Find a 2015 computer science Internship in Los Angeles, CA. Do you enjoy building new algorithmic processes? Do you like thinking about computational theories and how they can scale to solve big technical problems? If your answer is yes, then you’re a perfect candidate for a computer science internship.
But what does an internship in computer science involve and what types of companies can you work for? A CS internship can take you down a lot of different paths, often depending on what type of programming languages you currently use and which you want to learn. Whether you are a front end coder, using Java and CSS, a back-end coder who currently works with Ruby, Python, or Scala, or a mobile developer who knows how to build on either the Android or the iPhone platform, there are a lot of ways you can make an impact at companies of various sizes. Chances are, by holding an internship in computer science, you’ll be working with several of these languages and learning the intricacies of each from veterans with plenty of experience in the field.
The really exciting thing about a computer science internship is the range of different companies to work for. Whether it’s a small startup, that needs extra hands to help push new code daily, or a large non-profit that needs a tech savvy student to build new site features, your skills will be in high demand during your computer science internship and there will be no shortage of challenges or learning experiences.
One of the other great aspects of being a computer science major is that your skills are in high demand. According to a recent Forbes study computer science majors are one of the top 10 most sought after hires, and often are getting paid some of the most competitive wages in the country for both jobs and internships. Average salaries tend to be in the $15 to $17 per hour range, but a really talented hacker can make up to $30 an hour at leading tech companies in Silicon Valley or Fortune 500s on the east coast or elsewhere.
With an internship in computer science, you will also be able to explore one of the many sub-fields such as computer graphics, computational problems, software engineering or quantitative analysis. So whether or not you’re a hard-core techie, any of the many CS internships will be the perfect start to developing a diverse skill set in relationship to writing code and advanced programming.
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Romeo's Fuzzy Face Wake up Tactic
Sometimes being subtle doesn’t do the job. Today I really needed to get in the staff’s face, literally, in order to keep from starving to death as the staff members slumbered.
How could anyone sleep through being loved on by this furry face?
So, I climbed on female staff’s stomach and sat down. I meowed and scooted up on her chest. I meowed again and scooted up onto her neck.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking. This should have been enough to get her moving. But, alas, it was not so. She continued to lay there, useless.
So, I began furiously rubbing my head against her neck, then her cheek and ear. I continued the meowmeowmeowmeowmeow in case the full on fuzzy face attack didn’t get the point across.
Fortunately for her it did. I was just getting ready to stick my nose in her ear when she opened her eyes and OH, HELLO BREAKFAST!
Readers, how does your cat wake you up? Is he as savvy as I am?
The post Romeo’s Fuzzy Face Wake up Tactic appeared first on Petfinder.
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Ending Executions
As I write, the United States is preparing to execute Timothy McVeigh on May 16. If the death penalty is to exist at all, it's hard to imagine a more compelling candidate--a terrorist and mass murderer, apparently sane and unremorseful. Yet, remarkably, there are stirrings of debate about McVeigh's execution, led by the doubts expressed by some of the families of his Oklahoma City victims. When the hardest of hard cases gives so many people pause, it's clear that an opportunity is at hand for a public reappraisal of capital punishment in America.
In the last year or two, a remarkable shift has taken place. Minds have begun to change, or at least open. The Republican governor of Illinois, George Ryan, declared a moratorium on executions in his state. The New Hampshire legislature repealed the death penalty, only to have Governor Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, veto the bill. George Will and Pat Robertson have expressed reservations about the death penalty. Polls show a sizable drop in public support for capital punishment. Ryan's action, in particular, has had a ripple effect. Returning to the United States earlier this year after a stint as American ambassador to France, Felix Rohatyn wrote in The Washington Post that despite his service to the two New York governors who kept capital punishment at bay for 16 years, he never questioned the death penalty until "Ryan's moratorium, together with repeated reports about incompetent legal representation ... made me take this issue more seriously."
These developments suggest that despite the federal government's near-celebration of McVeigh's execution, something has changed the political calculus on what used to be an intractable issue. But what? That was one of the questions on my mind as I approached three recent books on executions in America.
Proximity to Death, by historian William S. McFeely, is the best of these. McFeely's book is a valuable corrective to the demonization that dominates most public discussion of crime, particularly the death penalty. His is a personal journey, starting with a phone call out of the blue from Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, a public-interest law office that represents death row inmates. Bright, we learn, wants McFeely to testify on the history of the Confederate flag. He does, and it sparks an interest in the people and the issues behind Bright's work. McFeely's short book, whose chapters mostly bear place names ("Morgan County Courthouse," "Phillips State Prison"), portrays lawyers with low salaries and high ideals, jurors who agonize over life-and-death decisions, and convicted murderers bent on self-improvement.
An emeritus professor of the humanities at the University of Georgia and a biographer of Frederick Douglass and Ulysses S. Grant, McFeely has the gift of bringing historical figures to life. That skill is evident in his rendering of the staff at 83 Poplar Street in Atlanta, the offices of the Southern Center for Human Rights. The character (in all senses of that word) of Steve Bright, the son of a Kentucky farmer, especially shines through in McFeely's book. To take one example: When a prosecutor agreed to a guilty plea from one of Bright's clients in exchange for a prison term, Bright accepted, and then learned that the county lawyers had conditioned the deal on Bright's waiver of any attorney's fees that might be assessed--a critical chunk of revenue for a firm like Bright's, where both he and the receptionist make the same salary: $23,000. When this outrageous prosecution maneuver became public, there was an outcry leading to an inquiry by the Georgia State Bar. But Bright stuck by the deal: "I knew ... that the offer was unconscionable and possibly illegal, but we had a young man's life at stake, so what were we going to do?"
Although I know Bright and many of his colleagues, I was not aware until I read Proximity to Death of the recruiting and mentoring role that he has played, a role that has given him an impact and an influence well beyond Georgia: Both Bryan Stevenson, the brilliant director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, and George Kendall, the indefatigable general of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's efforts, cut their teeth in his office. In the kind of world I would like to live in, little boys and girls would have no higher aspiration in life than to grow up to be like Bright and his disciples. Their action figures would fly off the shelves at Toys "R" Us, and their photographs would beam at us from the covers of Wheaties boxes.
In addition to showing the humanity of capital defense lawyers, McFeely does the same for some of their clients. I was moved by his account of the relationship he developed with William Brooks, an African American from Columbus, Georgia, who was charged in the abduction, rape, and murder of a young white woman. Brooks was on death row but is now serving a life sentence, after Bright's firm won him a new trial. Brooks never went beyond junior high school, and only one teacher ever took an interest in him. Having spent his adolescence in prison and juvenile facilities for minor crimes, he earned a high-school-equivalency certificate. McFeely visits him in prison and brings him books, and they have lively discussions about Patrick O'Brian's nautical saga Master and Commander and Andrew Young's memoir of his civil rights activism, An Easy Burden. He doesn't romanticize people like Brooks, but neither does he permit them to pass into history as the sum of their worst acts.
McFeely finds an irresistible, Shakespearean element in Brooks's story. In 1912 a 12-year-old Columbus boy, Cleo Land, the son of a prominent white family, was accidentally shot and killed during horseplay with a black friend. The black boy was charged with murder, but when the jury returned a manslaughter verdict, an angry mob led by Land's family abducted the boy from the courthouse, took him to the outskirts of town (on a city streetcar filled with other passengers; all 19 of the lynch mob paid their fares), and riddled him with bullets. Remarkably, four of the killers, including Cleo Land's cousin, Brewster Land, were indicted and tried. A jury took 29 minutes to acquit them. Fast-forward to 1977, the first capital trial of William Brooks. The judge who sentenced him to die--and whose prejudicial instructions to the jury would result, years later, in a second trial for Brooks--was John L. Land, Brewster's son.
The case of William Brooks also figures in When the State Kills by Austin Sarat, professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College. Recent advances in DNA technology have demonstrated that, though it may seem counterintuitive, eyewitness testimony is often unreliable. An unwitting illustration of this is the difference in these two authors' accounts of the Brooks trial. Both were in the courtroom (Sarat makes a cameo appearance in McFeely's book) and met many of the participants. Sarat hones in on the prosecutor's constant references to the victim's supposed virginity--the totemic invocation of the archetypal charge that spurred thousands of lynchings: the rape of a white woman by a black man.
That's missing from the McFeely book, but Sarat's account oddly fails to mention another archetype that figured in the case: the unreliability of identifications clouded by racial stereotyping. The victim's mother said she saw her daughter get into a car with a black man. But she first identified another black man as the killer, until he was able to establish an alibi. If he hadn't been able to do so, he might be one of today's DNA releases--assuming that he hadn't been executed first.
Through the case of William Brooks, Sarat tries to take us into the "ordinary world of capital punishment," and the way its "racialization" encourages "an acceptance, if not a warm embrace, of state violence as a necessary tool in the struggle between 'us' and 'them.'" For Sarat, the question is no less profound than whether "capital punishment is compatible with democratic values." He wants to "condemn state killing for what it does to, not for, America." Ending the death penalty, he believes, would help us "preserve what we value in our legal institutions" and "begin the work of healing the divisions in our culture."
Who Owns Death? by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell (who previously collaborated on Hiroshima in America, a book about another kind of "legitimate" killing) is similar in scope and concerns to Sarat's book. Both works have a strong psychological strain and look at the impact the death penalty has on various parties involved--victims, offenders, lawyers, and juries. Like Sarat, Lifton (director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College in New York City) and Mitchell (features editor of Editor & Publisher) are concerned with what the death penalty does to us: "what ripples and reverberations ... executions send out to society as a whole." They find that many of those involved in executions are ambivalent about them and about their role in them. The authors believe that this uneasiness extends to the larger population, however ingrained support for capital punishment is believed to be.
In one chapter, Lifton and Mitchell take us through a gory parade of botched executions, including the gruesome 1997 death in Florida's electric chair of Pedro Medina, whose head burst into flames. This prompted soul-searching on the part of some political and editorial supporters of the death penalty. But not Attorney General Bob Butterworth (known to the nation as the chairman of Al Gore's presidential campaign in Florida), who warned: "People who wish to commit murder better not do it in Florida, because we may have a problem with the electric chair." This appalling callousness is all too typical of many current Democratic officeholders--such as New Hampshire's Governor Shaheen--who apparently drew the lesson from Michael Dukakis's failed 1988 presidential campaign that they should never be out-toughed on crime. And Butterworth has nothing on California Democrats such as Senator Barbara Boxer, who bragged that she voted 100 times in Congress for the death penalty, or Governor Gray Davis, who cited Singapore's draconian justice system with admiration: "You can't punish people enough as far as I'm concerned." (If the death penalty is to be abolished or sharply limited in the United States, it seems that leadership may have to come, Nixon-to-China style, from Republicans like George Ryan.)
Lifton and Mitchell also illustrate the arbitrariness of the death penalty by looking at the 1999 visit to St. Louis by Pope John Paul II. The pope met with Missouri's governor, the late Mel Carnahan, and urged him to grant clemency to Darrell Mease, who was facing an execution date for the 1988 murder of a 69-year-old farmer, his wife, and their 19-year-old grandson, whom he was convicted of ambushing in the Ozark woods and shooting in the face at point-blank range. Carnahan, who had approved 26 executions since taking office, had intervened previously in only one, involving a mentally retarded inmate. Yet he spared Mease's life, citing his "deep and abiding respect for the pontiff." Even Mease's lawyer, acknowledging a Republican politician's gripe that Mease had one of the weakest clemency claims, found it hard to justify: "I guess timing is everything, huh?"
That's for sure. All the arguments against the death penalty have been available for many years. Why are they registering now? Both When the State Kills and Who Owns Death? discuss recent changes in public sentiment, and end on a note of optimism that would have been hard to justify just a few years ago. Sarat concludes by urging that the anti-death-penalty movement move beyond the morally based abolitionist approach of the past to embrace arguments about equal protection, due process, and fairness. Indeed, these arguments have made headway in the last few years, but they are not new ones. In the 1980s, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, among a number of others, urged just such a course. Lifton and Mitchell see abolition coming about through the increasing use of life-without-parole laws. But again, that option has been part of the debate for many years. I think, instead, that the change we are seeing is made up of several parts.
One part is science: DNA tests rendering undeniable proof, in case after case, of innocent people who came close to having their lives extinguished. (Testing may, however, be a mixed blessing; although people on death row are losers in a bizarre lottery in which race and class skew the outcome, most of them are not innocent.) Another part of the mix involves time and sheer numbers: On the death penalty and on some other criminal justice issues--like racial profiling and mandatory-minimum sentences--the United States came to a tipping point a year or two ago. How much more draconian could our justice system have become? Only a society with its values so out of whack can afford the luxury of a discussion about fairness.
But there are other elements, too, and these books largely miss them. One is organizing: the hard work of activists all across the country, like Mike Farrell of Death Penalty Focus, and Steve Hawkins of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, who laid the groundwork over many years for the change that now seems sudden to many. Sarat, Lifton, and Mitchell, who treat such developments almost like acts of nature, are better at describing the changed cultural and political landscape on the death penalty than they are at explaining how it came about and what will take us to the point of abolition that they believe is on the horizon.
A final element in the mix is research, which gives activists and political leaders tools to employ. Governor Ryan was moved to declare his moratorium because a Northwestern University journalism professor put his students to work on a project investigating death row cases, and they found so many discrepancies that a large number of cases were reopened. Sam Millsap, the former district attorney for San Antonio (and someone I used to debate on the death penalty and other criminal justice issues in the mid-1980s, when I was director of the Texas Civil Liberties Union), recently called for a moratorium on executions. Why? Because he was influenced by the work of Columbia Law School professor James Liebman, who spent years on a study of the error rate in capital convictions.
The book about the death penalty that will affect the debate by the power of its story, the way Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities did for public-school financing, or by the cogency of its argument, the way Derek Bok and William Bowen's Shape of the River did for affirmative action, has yet to be written. But each of these books makes an important contribution, nonetheless. What they demonstrate, powerfully, is that the fight against the death penalty is a long-haul effort. There are few victories in the short term, and it is not possible to do the work each day without a belief that your actions will have an effect over time. One lawyer at a death penalty resource center told Sarat that he views "every single act or omission that I am doing" as part of an effort to make "a record"--if not for the immediate case, then for the larger one.
You are making a record such that even after you ultimately fail to save your client's life you show that he was a worthy human being, that there was an explanation for what he did which the legal system could not, or would not hear... . There are lessons in the stories we tell, lessons about poverty, abuse, and injustice. Maybe they can't be heard just yet, but maybe they will be heard sometime.
In recent months, the lessons have begun to break through and the accumulated stories to be heard. It is possible, just possible, that the execution of Timothy McVeigh will in time be seen as one of the last acts of the killing state.
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Graffiti is an often overlooked but nonetheless integral part of inner-urban culture. Graffiti has transcended the written word and has now become a cross between vandalism and art. Graffiti began to gain prominence in the mid 1970s as a series of colorful images, names and messages that were spray-painted on walls, subway trains and handball courts though it certainly did not originate then. Graffiti art is a melting pot of pop influences that draws its influence from 1960s nostalgia, music, dance, television, comic books, computer graphics and jargon.
Graffiti is as old as the history of humankind. People have been marking and making art on walls ever since cavemen. The word itself originates from the Italian verb graffiare, which means "to scratch." Written graffiti, as opposed to pictorial graffiti, originates in Western culture from the Greeks who were the first civilization to learn to write and therefore hold the distinction of being the first to express themselves graphically. Interestingly enough, many examples still remain from the Greek era, especially from the ancient Athenian marketplace. Many of these graffitiare, however, obscene.
The Romans carried on the tradition of graffiti from the Greeks. Roman graffiti mainly dealt with either sexual or scatological subjects or politics or both at the same time. A lot of Roman graffiti has been preserved in the ruins of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Other ancient people who engaged in graffiti include the Mayans at Tikal; Guatemala, whose graffiti can be dated back to between 100 BC and 700 AD; and the Phrygians in the area that is now central Turkey. Phrygian writings can be dated back to around 1200 BC.
The medieval period also had its own share of graffiti artists. They inscribed the walls, pillars and floors of monasteries, churches and dungeons with their graffiti. The Tower of London, especially, has quite a few grim descriptions daubed on its walls by those who were held prisoner within it. Disturbingly, some of this graffiti is written in blood.
During the 18th century, graffiti turned away from its vulgar past and a cultural blossoming took place with graffiti becoming inspired by literature and encompassing such topics such as love, insults, health and diseases. In 1731, Hurlo Thrumbo collected examples found in taverns and inns in England and published them in his book The Merry-Thought or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Graffiti in the 18th century was not limited to Europe and was seen across the Atlantic in the "New World." This is seen most famously in graffiti by Daniel Boone on a tree in Tennessee, which says, "D. Boon Cilled a BAR in THE YEAR 1760."
No real scholarly attention was paid to graffiti in the United States until the publication of Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America: A Glossarial Study of the Low Element in the English Vocabulary by Allen Walker. One of his notable conclusions was the interesting difference between the traditional definition of words in the English language and the way they were actually used in common practice.
After World War II, graffiti began to evolve and become a hallmark of youth culture, which was itself undergoing a period of rapid growth. In the 1950s in America, there was growing ethnic pride and identity among different immigrant groups. Graffiti became a way of communicating between rival groups. For instance, in Los Angeles, Mexican-American gangs used graffiti to mark their territory. For the first time, graffiti became an expression of groups and not just the individual.
In the 1960s, "tagging" became popular, especially in New York City. Tagging was simply writing one's initials and a street number and this trend set off a graffiti explosion that lasted 20 years. What distinguished tagging from simple vandalism was its territorial significance and the representation of a new kind of powerful subculture of youth that had little respect for the laws of mainstream society. The popularity of tagging is generally thought to be traced back to an individual known as "TAKI 183," whose tag appeared throughout the five boroughs of New York.
The New York City authorities passed a tough anti-graffiti law in October 1972 to make it illegal to carry spray paint in a public building. The city spent $10 million a year to remove graffiti but unsurprisingly this only had the opposite effect and graffiti continued to grow. The backlash also manifested itself with rival groups competing to create the largest and most outrageous pieces in various style wars or aesthetic experiments that began to differentiate between graffiti art and graffiti. A famous piece of graffiti art from this period is the John Lennon "memorial train" created by Lady Pink and Iz the Wiz in 1981.
Graffiti: Selected full-text books and articles
Painting without Permission: Hip-Hop Graffiti Subculture
Janice Rahn.
Bergin and Garvey, 2002
On the Margins of Art Worlds
Larry Gross.
Westview Press, 1995
Librarian’s tip: Chap. 11 "Graffiti as Public and Private Art"
Youth Crime and Youth Culture in the Inner City
Bill Sanders.
Routledge, 2005
Librarian’s tip: Chap. 5 "Graffiti, Joyriding, Vandalism"
Judging the Image: Art, Value, Law
Alison Young.
Routledge, 2004
Librarian’s tip: Chap. 3 "Written on the Skin of the City"
Handbook of American Popular Culture
M. Thomas Inge.
Librarian’s tip: "Graffiti" begins on p. 549
Joe Austin.
Columbia University Press, 2001
European Landscapes of Rock-Art
George Nash; Christopher Chippindale.
Routledge, 2002
Lyman G. Chaffee.
Greenwood Press, 1993
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Awesome South Park Quotes (Hard)
Random Television or quote Quiz
Can you name the awesome south park quotes?
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How to Play
Score 0/20 Timer 08:00
QuoteAnswerCharacter, Episode
'Oh my God, theykilled Kenny...'Stan then Kyle, Common Phrase
'Respect my...'-Cartman, Common Phrase
'They took our...'-Towns people, Goobacks (8th season)
'I've been licking this carpet for three hours and I still don't feel like a...'-Cartman, Tom's Rhinoplasty (1st season)
'Gentleman, this could very well lead to the end of the world...'-Blizzard CEO, Make love, not Warcraft (10th season)
'And the winner of the costume contest is... Wendy! for her...'-Mr. Garrison, Pinkeye and Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery (3rd season)
'I'm afraid Earth, all of Earth is a intergalacitic televsion show' 'Oh my God...'-Towns people, Cancelled (7th season)
'Oh now it's just two fitty? What, is there a sale on...'-Thomas Chef's Father, Succubus (3rd season)
'Hey guys, you know what they call a jewish womens boobs?'-Cartman, The return of Chef (10th season)
'I'm not the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard, and Sceintology is just one big global...'-Stan, Trapped in the Closet (9th season)
QuoteAnswerCharacter, Episode
'Well, you ain't Fiona Apple, and if you ain't Fiona Apple I don't give a...'-Officer Barbrady, Mecha-Steisand (1st season)
'...And of course to feed you your chili. Do you like it? Do you like it, Scott? I call it...'-Cartman, Scott Tenorman Must Die (5th season)
'You guys look here. In this Nancy Drew Mystery, Nancy goes to the beach and gets sand trapped in her shoe...'-Cartman, It hits the Fan (5th season)
'I would never let a woman kick my ass I'd be like 'Hey! why don't you stop dressing me up like a mailman and making me dance for you...'-Cartman, An Elephant makes love to a Pig (1st season)
'Herro, schity wok. How may I herlp you...'-City Wok Guy, (Whenever he anwsers the phone)
'They're not Pirate Ghosts Jonathan, they're...'-David Silveria, Korn's Groovy Ghost Pirate Mystery (3rd season)
'This is my impersonation of an American...:-Chinese Announcer, Conjoined Fetus Lady (2nd season)
'The right age to start having sex is...'-Chef, Proper Condom Use (5th season)
'I see two guys inside, they have Sarah Peterson's doll, you...'-Cartman, Lil Crime Stoppers (7th season)
'Well I'm a badass cowboys livin' in the...'-Cartman, Cat Orgy (3rd season)
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Created Nov 20, 2009ReportNominate
Tags:quote, character, episode, hard, park, south
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id summary reporter owner description type status priority component version resolution keywords cc guest host 7064 Virtualbox crash in QtGuiVBox4!QWidget::repaint+0x5dcb mhanor "I can reproduce the crash every time I attempt to do it. '''Host OS''': Windows XP SP3 32 bit[[br]] '''Guest OS''': Windows XP SP3 32 bit, GA installed, 2D/3D disabled, (VT-x enabled or disabled, it doesn't matter) I've first encountered the crash by mistake (switching between 2 VM windows at the right moment) while playing with VB 3.2.6 beta.[[br]] VB 3.2.4 and VB 3.2.6.!r63112 are also affected. Steps: 1. Start the guest OS, let it load 2. Shutdown the XP guest (ACPI shutdown). While it does that, switch back and forth between the VM window and some other window covering the first (of another program or it can be another VM window, it's your choice). Or you can continuously minimize and maximize the VM window (click the VM window's taskbar button). Approximately 2 cycles of minimize/maximize (or 4-6 window switching) per second are enough, just click the VM window's taskbar button to do that, while the guest is shutting down." defect closed major GUI VirtualBox 3.2.10 fixed Windows Windows
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