Download or read book Gabe Johnson Takes Over written by Geoff Herbach and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Geoff Herbach, the award-winning author of the hit young adult novels Stupid Fast and Nothing Special, comes the ultimate underdog story, which will resonate with anyone who has suffered from teasing and bullying at the hands of the high school social hierarchy—and decided to do something about it. (Previously titled Fat Boy vs The Cheerleaders.) Gabe is having a tough week. Normally the funny kid at the lunch table, he's on edge from trying to kick his soda addiction. So when news breaks that his beloved marching band camp has been cancelled due to lack of funding, he's furious. What makes him even madder? The school's vending machine money—which had previously been collected by the band—is now sponsoring the new cheer squad. The war is ON. And Gabe is leading the charge. No one will be safe from the Geekers' odd brand of wrath: not the principal, the band teacher, the local newspaper, and certainly not the cheerleaders and their jock boyfriends. Get ready: Life at Minnekota Lake Area High School is about to change. Gabe Johnson is taking over. "A funny, uplifting, and rousing book that'll make readers think. In other words, it's a real gem." —K. M. Walton, author of Cracked and Empty

Download or read book Fat Boy vs the Cheerleaders written by Geoff Herbach and published by Sourcebooks Fire. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the high school cheerleading team takes over a soda vending machine's funds, which were previously collected by the pep band, Gabe Johnson, an overweight "band geek" tired of being called names and looked down on, declares war.

Download or read book Rescue at Lake Wild written by Terry Lynn Johnson and published by HMH Books For Young Readers. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this funny and moving animals-in-peril adventure, a twelve-year-old girl and her two best friends determine to rescue two orphaned beaver kits--and soon find themselves trying to solve a local environmental crisis. Perfect for fans of Pax and A Boy Called Bat. Everyone knows that twelve-year-old Madison "Madi" Lewis is not allowed to bring home any more animals. After she's saved hairless mice, two birds, a rabbit, and a stray tom cat that ended up destroying the front porch, Madi's parents decide that if they find one more stray animal in the house, she won't be allowed to meet Jane Goodall at an upcoming gala event. But when Madi and her two best friends, Aaron and Jack, rescue beaver kits whose mother was killed, they find themselves at the center of a local conspiracy that's putting the beavers and their habitats in danger. As Madi and her friends race to uncover the threat targeting the beavers, Madi must put her animal whisperer skills to the test in both raising the orphaned beaver kits and staying out of trouble long enough.

Download or read book Anything You Want written by Geoff Herbach and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taco's mom always said, "Today is the best day of your life, and tomorrow will be even better." That was hard to believe the day she died of cancer and when Taco's dad had to move up north for work, but he sure did believe it when Maggie Corrigan agreed to go with him to junior prom. Taco loves Maggie-even more than the tacos that earned him his nickname. And she loves him right back. Except, all that love? It gets Maggie pregnant. Everyone else may be freaking out, but Taco can't wait to have a real family again. He just has to figure out what it means to be dad and how to pass calculus. And then there's getting Maggie's parents to like him. Because it's would be so much easier for them to be together if he didn't have to climb the side of the Corrigan's house to see her...

Download or read book Henry Hikes to Fitchburg written by D.B. Johnson and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006-10-30 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, the wonderfully appealing Henry Hikes to Fitchburg follows two friends who have very different approaches to life. When the two agree to meet one evening in Fitchburg, which is thirty miles away, each decides to get there in his own way, and the two have surprisingly different days.

Download or read book The Next Shift written by Gabriel Winant and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men in hardhats were once the heart of America’s working class; now it is women in scrubs. What does this shift portend for our future? Pittsburgh was once synonymous with steel. But today most of its mills are gone. Like so many places across the United States, a city that was a center of blue-collar manufacturing is now dominated by the service economy—particularly health care, which employs more Americans than any other industry. Gabriel Winant takes us inside the Rust Belt to show how America’s cities have weathered new economic realities. In Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods, he finds that a new working class has emerged in the wake of deindustrialization. As steelworkers and their families grew older, they required more health care. Even as the industrial economy contracted sharply, the care economy thrived. Hospitals and nursing homes went on hiring sprees. But many care jobs bear little resemblance to the manufacturing work the city lost. Unlike their blue-collar predecessors, home health aides and hospital staff work unpredictable hours for low pay. And the new working class disproportionately comprises women and people of color. Today health care workers are on the front lines of our most pressing crises, yet we have been slow to appreciate that they are the face of our twenty-first-century workforce. The Next Shift offers unique insights into how we got here and what could happen next. If health care employees, along with other essential workers, can translate the increasing recognition of their economic value into political power, they may become a major force in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Hyperbole and a Half written by Allie Brosh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times Bestseller “Funny and smart as hell” (Bill Gates), Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half showcases her unique voice, leaping wit, and her ability to capture complex emotions with deceptively simple illustrations. FROM THE PUBLISHER: Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices. This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written. Brosh’s debut marks the launch of a major new American humorist who will surely make even the biggest scrooge or snob laugh. We dare you not to. FROM THE AUTHOR: This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: Pictures Words Stories about things that happened to me Stories about things that happened to other people because of me Eight billion dollars* Stories about dogs The secret to eternal happiness* *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

Download or read book Live Like a Fruit Fly written by Gabe Berman and published by Health Communications, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-08 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fruit flies are born, begin attending to their fruit-fly agendas almost immediately, then succumb to old age before witnessing a single change of season. Likewise, we live and die in the virtual blink of an eye. Unfortunately, we often ignore our own mortality and simply coast through our days without ever checking out the bowl of fruit on the other side of the kitchen. The life we hoped for can wait for another day, we think. But another day often slips through our grasp, and we learn that we can't wait another day . . . that if we are to live consciously, we must learn to live like a fruit fly, not tomorrow but at this very moment, the one we are experiencing now. We are responsible for creating our own destiny. Our gut, our instincts--the GPS we're all born with--will never lead us astray if we trust it. Silver linings--more fruit to feast on--will always be within reach if only we're willing to explore.

Download or read book Stupid Fast written by Geoff Herbach and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just before his sixteenth birthday, Felton Reinstein has a sudden growth spurt that turns him from a small, jumpy, picked-on boy with the nickname of "Squirrel Nut" to a powerful athlete, leading to new friends, his first love, and the courage to confront his family's past and current problems.

Download or read book Love Death Rare Books written by Robert Hellenga and published by Thorndike Press Large Print. This book was released on 2021-01-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chas. Johnson & Sons has been a family operation for three generations--grandfather, father and son. But when it comes time for Gabe Johnson to take the reins of the business, the world of books has changed, and the combination of the internet and inner city rents forces the store to close. But instead of folding his hand, Gabe decides to risk everything he has and reopen the shop--and, in a sense restart his life--in a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan. Haunted his entire life by an obsession with a former lover, he finds her again only to be faced with yet another even more difficult challenge that threatens the well-being of the revival of the bookstore as well as the fate of his rekindled relationship.

Download or read book All the Forever Things written by Jolene Perry and published by Albert Whitman & Company. This book was released on 2017-04-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gabriella and Bree have been best friends forever—or as close to forever as you can get. But their relationship is put to the test when Bree breaks their friendship. Can the two friends put the pieces back together? From growing up in the funeral home her family runs, Gabriella knows that death is a part of life and nothing is forever. Yet Bree, her best friend, has been a constant; it's always been the two of them together against the world. But when Bree starts dating a guy—the worst guy— from that ultra-popular world, suddenly she doesn't have time for Gabe anymore. Now the only one at school who wants to spend time with "Graveyard Gabe" is Hartman, the new guy, but Gabe, not wanting to lose her mind over a boyfriend the way Bree has, holds back. It takes a very strange prom night (with the family hearse instead of a limo) for Gabe to truly fall for Hartman. But when she leaves the after-prom party with him, she’s not there for Bree—or for the deadly accident that happens that night. Bree survives, but will she and Gabe ever be able to rebuild their friendship?

Download or read book The Saddle and Show Horse Chronicle written by and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Worm Surprise written by Becky Freeman and published by Faith Kidz. This book was released on 2000 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gabe's new friend Dottie loves polka dots so he gives her a ladybug as a gift. Includes factual information about ladybugs.

Download or read book Where Dandelions Bloom written by Tara Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes an excerpt from Engraved on the heart.

Download or read book One Life written by Scot McKnight and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2010-12-21 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the “Christian life” all about? Studying the Bible, attending church, cultivating a prayer life, witnessing to others—those are all good. But is that really what Jesus has in mind? The answer, says Scot McKnight in One.Life, lies in Jesus’ words, “Follow me.” What does it look like to follow Jesus, and how will doing so change the way we live our life—our love.life, our justice.life, our peace.life, our community.life, our sex.life—everything about our life. One.Life will open your eyes to the full, compelling immensity of what it means to be a Christian. “Jesus offers to us a kingdom dream that transforms us to the very core of our being,” says Scot McKnight. “His vision is so big we are called to give our entire life to it. His vision is so big it swallows up our dreams.” Discover exactly what Jesus meant when he announced the arrival of God’s kingdom. Equipping you with a new understanding of that kingdom’s radical nature, One.Life shares profound, challenging, and practical insights on how to demonstrate its reality in your life. In many ways, what The Cost of Discipleship by Bonhoeffer challenged Christians to do in earlier generations, One.Life will do for a new generation. One.Life will call you beyond the flatlands of religiosity toward a kingdom vision that will shape everything you do.

Download or read book The Code of Honor written by Paul J. Maurer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2024-05-10 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and practical framework for ethical practices in contemporary cybersecurity While some professions – including medicine, law, and engineering – have wholeheartedly embraced wide-ranging codes of ethics and conduct, the field of cybersecurity continues to lack an overarching ethical standard. This vacuum constitutes a significant threat to the safety of consumers and businesses around the world, slows commerce, and delays innovation. The Code of Honor: Embracing Ethics in Cybersecurity delivers a first of its kind comprehensive discussion of the ethical challenges that face contemporary information security workers, managers, and executives. Authors Ed Skoudis, President of the SANS Technology Institute College and founder of the Counter Hack team, and Dr. Paul Maurer, President of Montreat College, explain how timeless ethical wisdom gives birth to the Cybersecurity Code which is currently being adopted by security practitioners and leaders around the world. This practical book tells numerous engaging stories that highlight ethically complex situations many cybersecurity and tech professionals commonly encounter. It also contains compelling real-world case studies – called Critical Applications – at the end of each chapter that help the reader determine how to apply the hands-on skills described in the book. You'll also find: A complete system of cybersecurity ethics relevant to C-suite leaders and executives, front-line cybersecurity practitioners, and students preparing for careers in cybersecurity. Carefully crafted frameworks for ethical decision-making in cybersecurity. Timeless principles based on those adopted in countless professions, creeds, and civilizations. Perfect for security leaders, operations center analysts, incident responders, threat hunters, forensics personnel, and penetration testers, The Code of Honor is an up-to-date and engaging read about the ethically challenging world of modern cybersecurity that will earn a place in the libraries of aspiring and practicing professionals and leaders who deal with tech every day.

Download or read book The Sixteen Pleasures written by Robert Hellenga and published by Delta. This book was released on 1995-05-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter One Where I Want to Be I was twenty-nine years old when the Arno flooded its banks on Friday 4 November 1966. According to the Sunday New York Times the damage wasn't extensive, but by Monday it was clear that Florence was a disaster. Twenty feet of water in the cloisters of Santa Croce, the Cimabue crucifix ruined beyond hope of restoration, panels ripped from the Baptistry doors, the basement of the Biblioteca Nazionale completely underwater, hundreds of thousands of volumes waterlogged, the Archivio di Stato in total disarray. On Tuesday I decided to go to Italy, to offer my services as a humble book conservator, to help in any way I could, to save whatever could be saved, including myself. The decision wasn't a popular one at home. Papa was having money troubles of his own and didn't want to pay for a ticket. And my boss at the Newberry Library didn't understand either. He already had his ticket, paid for by the library, and needed me to mind the store. There wasn't any point in both of us going, was there? "The why don't I go and you can mind the store?" "Because, because, because . . ." "Yes?" Because it just didn't make sense. He couldn't see his way clear to granting me a leave of absence, not even a leave of absence without pay. He even suggested that the library might have to replace me, in which case . . . But I decided to go anyway. I had enough money in my savings account for a ticket on Icelandic, and I figured I could live on the cheap once I got there. Besides, I wanted to break the mold in which my life was hardening, and I thought this might be a way to do it. Going to Florence was better than waiting around with nothing coming up. My English teacher at Kenwood High used to say that we're like onions: you can peel off one layer after another and never get to a center, an inner core. You just run out of layers. But I think I'm like a peach or an apricot or a nectarine. There's a pit at the center. I can crack my teeth on it, or I can suck on it like a piece of candy; but it won't crumble, and it won't dissolve. The pit is an image of myself when I was nineteen. I'm in Sardegna, and I'm standing high up on a large rock–a cliff, actually–and I don't have any clothes on, and everyone is looking at me, telling me to come down, not to jump, it's too high. It's my second time in Italy. I spent a year here with Mama when I was fifteen, and then I came back by myself, after finishing high school at home, to do the last year of the liceo with my former classmates. Now we're celebrating the end of our examinations–Silvia (who spent a year with us in Chicago), Claudia, Rossella, Giulio, Fabio, Alessandro. Names like flowers, or bells. And me, Margot Harrington. More friends are coming later. Silvia's parents (my host family) have a summer house just outside Terranova, but we're camping on the beach, five kilometers down the coast. The coast is safe, they say, though there are bandits in the centro. Wow! It's my birthday–August first–and we've had a supper of bluefish and squid that we caught with a net. The squid taste like rubber bands, the heavy kind that I used to chew on in grade school and that boys sometimes used to snap our bottoms with in junior high. Life is sharp and snappy, too, full of promise, like the sting of those rubber bands: I've passed my examinations with distinction; I'm going to Harvard in the fall (well, to Radcliffe); I've got an Italian boyfriend named Fabio Fabbriani; and I've just been skinny-dipping in the stinging cold salt sea. The others have put their clothes on now–I can see them below me, sitting around the remains of the fire in shorts and halter tops and shirts with the sleeves rolled up two turns, talking, glancing up nervously–but I want to savor the taste/thrill of my own nakedness a little longer, unembarrassed in the dwindling light. It's the scariest thing I've ever done, except coming to Italy in the first place. Fabio sits with his back toward me while he smokes a cigarette, pretending to be angry because I won't come down, but when I close my eyes and will him to turn, he puts his cigarette out in the sand and turns. Just at that moment I jump, sucking in my breath for a scream but then holding it, in case I need it latter, which I do. I hit the Tyrrhenian Sea feet first, generating little waves that will, in theory, soon be lapping the beaches along the entire western coast of Italy–Sicily and North Africa, too. The Tyrrhenian Sea responds by closing over me and it's pitch, not like the pool in Chicago where I learned to swim, but deep and dark and dangerous and deadly. The air in my lungs–the scream and I saved for just such an occasion–carries me up to the surface, and I strike out for the cove, meeting Fabio before I'm halfway there, wondering if like me he's naked under the water and not knowing for sure till we're walking waist deep and he takes me by the shoulders and kisses me and I can feel something bobbing against my legs like a floating cork. We haven't made love yet, but it's won't be long now. O dio mio. The waiting is so lovely. He squeezes my buns and I squeeze his, surprised, and then we splash in to the beach and put on our clothes. What I didn't know at the time was that my mother had become seriously ill. Instead of spending the rest of the summer in Sardegna, I had to go back to Chicago, and then, after that, nothing happened. I mean none of the things I'd expected to happen happened. Instead of making love with Fabio Fabbriani on the verge of the Tyrrhenian Sea, I got laid on a vinyl sofa in the back room of the SNCC headquarters on Forty-seventh Street. Instead of going to Harvard, I went to Edgar Lee Masters College, where Mama had taught art history for twenty years. Instead of going to graduate school I spent two years at the Institute for Paper Technology on Green Bay Avenue; instead of becoming a research chemist I apprenticed myself to a book conservator in Hyde Park and then took a position in the conservation department of the Newberry Library. Instead of getting married and having a daughter of my own, I lived at home and looked after Mama, who was dying of lung cancer. A year went by, two years, three years, four. Mama died; Papa lost most of his money. My sister Meg got married and moved away; my sister Molly went to California with her boyfriend and then to Ann Arbor. The sixties were churning around me, and I couldn't seem to get a footing. I tried to plunge in, to get wet, to catch hold, to find a place in one of the boats tossing and turning on the white-water rapids: the sit-ins, the rock concerts, the freedom rides, SNCC, CORE, SDS, the Civil Rights Act, the Great Society. I spent a lot of time holding hands and singing "We shall overcome," I spent a lot of time buying coffee and doughnuts and rolling joints, and I spent some time on my back, too–the only position for a woman in the Movement. I'd had no sleep on the plane; my eyes were blurry so it was hard to read; and besides, the story I was reading was as depressing as the view from the window of the train–flat, gray, poor, dreary, actively ugly rather than passively uninteresting. And I kept thinking about Papa and his money troubles and his lawsuits, and about the embroidered seventeenth-century prayer books on my work table at the Newberry that needed to be disbound, washed, mended, and resewn before Christmas for an exhibit sponsored by the Caxton Club. So I was under a certain amount of pressure. I was looking for a sign, the way some religious people look for signs, something to let them know they're on the right track. Or on the wrong track, in which case they can turn back. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I was trying to pay attention, to notice everything–the faces of the two American women sitting opposite me in the compartment, scribbling furiously in their notebooks; the Neapolitan accent of the Italian conductor; the depressing French farmhouses, gray boxes of stucco or cinder block, I couldn't make out which. That's what I was doing–paying attention–when the train pulled into the station at Metz and I saw the Saint-Cyr cadet on the platform, bright as the Archangel Gabriel bringing the good news to the Virgin Mary. I'd better explain. Papa did all the cooking in our family. He started when Mama went to Italy one summer when I was nine–it was right after the war–to look at the pictures, to see for herself what she'd only seen in the Harvard University Prints series and on old three-by-four-inch tinted slides that she used to project on the dining room wall; and when she came back he kept on doing it. My sisters and I did the dishes and Papa took care of everything else, day in and day out, and whether it was Italian or French or Chinese or Malaysian, it was always wonderful, it was always special. Penne alla puttanesca, an arista tied with sprigs of rosemary, paper-thin strips of beef marinated in hoisin sauce and Szechwan peppercorns, whole fresh salmon poached in white wine and finished with a mustard sauce, chicken thighs simmered in soy sauce and lime juice, curries so fiery that at their first bite unwary guests would clutch their throats and cry out for water, which didn't help a bit. Those were our favorites, the standards against which we measured other dishes; but our very favorite treat of all was the dessert Papa made on our birthdays, instead of cake, which was supposed to look like the hats worn by cadets at Saint-Cyr, the French military academy. We'd never been to Saint-Cyr, of course, but we would have recognized a cadet anywhere in the world, if he'd been wearing his hat. That's why I was so startled when I looked out the window of the Luxembourg-Venise Express and saw my cadet standing there on the platform–the young man Papa had teased me about, the Prince Charming who had never materialized. He was holding a suitcase in one hand and shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, as if he had to go to the bathroom, and his parents were talking at him so intensely that I thought for a minute he was going to miss the train. And his hat! I couldn't believe it was a real hat and not a frozen mousse of chocolate and egg whites and whipped cream with squiggly Italian meringues running up and down the sides for braids. That hat stirred something inside me, made me feel I was doing the right thing and that I ought to keep going, that things would work out. Just to make sure I closed my eyes and willed him into the compartment, just as I had once willed Fabio Fabbriani to turn and watch me plunge feet first into the sea. As I was willing him into the compartment I was willing the American women out of it–not making my cadet's appearance contingent on their departure, however, because I was pretty sure they weren't going to budge. I kept my face down in my book and waited, eyes closed lightly, listening to the noises in the corridor. I was, I suppose, still operating, at least subconsciously, on a fairy-tale model of reality: I was Sleeping Beauty, or Snow White, waiting for some prince whose romantic kisses would awaken my full feelings, liberate my story senses, emancipate my drowsy and constrained imagination, take me back to that last Italian summer. The train was already in motion when the door of the compartment finally opened. I kept my eyes closed another two seconds and then looked up at–not my Prince Charming but the Neapolitan conductor, an old man so frail I'd had to help him hoist the American women's mammoth suitcases onto the overhead luggage rack. These suitcases were to luggage what Burberrys are to rainwear–lots of extra pockets and straps and mysterious zippers concealed under flaps. I asked him about the Saint-Cyr cadet. "The next compartment," he said. "Not your type. Too young. You need an older man like me." "You're already married." He shrugged, putting his whole body into it, arms, hands, shoulders, head cocked, stomach pulled in. "Better tell your friends"–we were speaking in Italian–"that the dining car will be taken off the train before we cross the border. You need to reserve a seat early." I nodded. "Unless," he went on, "they have those valises stuffed with American food. Porcamattina." He glanced upward at the suitcases, tapped his cheekbone with an index finger and was gone. I felt for these American women some of the mixed feelings that the traveler feels for the tourist. On the one hand you want to help, to show off your knowledge; on the other you don't want to get involved. I didn't want to get involved. They weren't my type. These were saltwater women–sailors, golfers, tennis players, clubwomen with suntans in November, large limbed, confident, conspicuous, firm, trim, sleek as walruses in their worsted wool suits. They reminded me of the Gold Coast women who used to show up around the edges of CORE demonstrations, with their checkbooks open, telling us how much they admired what we were doing, and how they wished they could help more. All fucked up ideologically, according to our leaders at SNCC: "They think their shit don't stink." As far as they knew, I was a scruffy little Italian–I hadn't spoken a word of English in their presence, and I was reading an Italian novel–and it was too late to undeceive them. I had heard too much. I knew, for example, that they'd met the previous summer at some kind of writing workshop at Johns Hopkins University and that they'd both jumped into the sack with their instructor, a novelist named Philip. I knew that Philip was bald but well hung ("like a shillelagh"). I knew that neither of them had done it dog fashion BP ("before Philip") and that they were traveling second class because Philip had told them they'd get more material that way for the stories they were going to write now that they were divorced. Part of their agenda, I gathered, was to notice things, to pay attention. Maybe they were looking for signs, too, maybe not; in either case they seemed to be trying to impress the details of European railroad travel onto the pages of their marbled composition books by sheer physical force. Nothing escaped their notice, not even the signs, in French, German and Italian, warning passengers not to throw things out the window and not to pull the cord on the signal d'alarme. All the details went into their notebooks–the fine of not less than 5,000 FF, the prison term of not less than one year. And when one noticed something, the other did, too: the instructions on the window latch, the way the armrests worked, the captions on the faded views of Chartres Cathedral that hung on the walls of the compartment above the backs of the seats. (I was tempted to look at them myself, but I didn't want to give myself away or interrupt their game.) I kept my nose in my book–Natalia Ginzburg's Lessico famigliare. It was a strenuous hour, and I was glad when, simultaneously, panting like dogs after a good run, they closed their notebooks and resumed their conversation.