In We Who Live Apart, Joan Connor returns to the dark New England of her earlier collection and the wry characters who inhabit it: a hunter who has spent too much time listening to the woods, a ferryman whose emotional seclusion leads to a doomed longing for a summer girl, a carnival diviner whose cards foretell her desertion, a corpse who, out of sheer meanness, will not stay below ground. Although childlessness, divorce, and alcoholism are recurrent motifs that underscore the estrangement of many characters, the moods of the stories are rarely bleak. Humor figures in often, as do elements of the folktale and the supernatural. Despite the stylistic variety in these stories, there is a shared vision of isolation in which characters, wittingly and unwittingly, ensure their separateness and even come to treasure it. As the narrator says in "The Anecdote of the Island," "After a year of debate, it conduces to this: I watch you leave as you once watched me. Our cars separate at the base of a hill. You diminish to a speck in my rearview mirror. When I look for you, I stare into my own eyes looking for you. And I begin to think that what you want is not love but the hope for love. Its remoteness. Its shadow self. You linger in dark places." Indeed, many of these characters linger in dark places, but without giving in to despair. In "October," a recovering alcoholic surprises herself and begins to risk the beginnings of reconnection. And in "Women's Problems," a character coping with the loss of her lover, and then her mother, manages to transmute loss to gain with the triumphant realization that she has become her mother and that, indeed, "Worse things could happen." For these characters, their apartness is as often a choice as a consequence, but the choice has a consequence. When Bluebeard's wife escapes her murderous husband and her fairy-tale narrative in "Bluebeard's First Wife," she finds that "Ordinariness sat upon [her] shoulders like a weather-eroded gargoyle." Whether these characters isolate themselves or find themselves isolated by nets of personal and communal history, they move to wisdom rather than despondency. Connor displays a keen ear for language and a mastery of prose rhythms and dialogue. Her writing, which is often lyrical in the best sense, amply repays the effort of rereading and reflection, and the variety of narrative techniques sustains the reader's interest.
What do you do for a living?" the podiatrist (or the photographer or the woman in the train station) asks, and Joan Connor answers, "I?m a writer," waiting with a cringe for the inevitable rejoinder: "Oh, boy, do I have a story for you!" How such offerings, not stories but small reports from the thick of life, become rich reflections on the nature of waiting and writing, language and love, memory and hope, is the mystery of this award-winning collection of essays. Traveling between the poles of Ohio and Vermont, childhood and motherhood, Connor writes of a peripatetic family whose oddities make the quirks of a Thurber household seem downright subdued; of a thirteen-year-old son as an unlikely companion through the torments of middle-aged dating; of old loves and new; and through it all, of writing as a means of finding the shortest distance between two lines: hope. With language that distills insight from anecdote and transforms the stuff of middling life into telling metaphor, The World Before Mirrors, winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, lifts the telling of a life?s stories into the realm of flight.
Flannery O'Connor was a writer of extraordinary power and virtuosity. Her strong supple prose blends humor, pathos, satire, and grotesquerie which leads the reader to the evil at the center of the self's labyrinth. There, she confronts that evil with originality and power, pulling the reader into consideration of the terrifying dependencies of love in the recesses of the heart. This study focuses on Flannery O'Connor's sense of the coincidence of the eternal and cosmic with worldly time and place—"the eternal crossroads"— and how that sense controls and infuses her fiction. From an examination of various influences upon Miss O'Connor's work—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Mauriac, Nathaniel West, and Hawthorne—the authors consider her novels and stories, as well as several stories never collected. Their textual analysis shows that her structures, images, motifs, and symbols became vehicles for anagogical meaning as she progressed from early promise to artistic fulfillment. Considering Miss O'Connor's own comments on her writing, the authors illuminate some frequently misunderstood features of her work, such as her "grotesques" and her stress on death and violence. In so doing they make an important contribution to our understanding of how Flannery O'Connor arrived at "the eternal crossroads.
“Sandra Day O’Connor takes you behind the closed doors of the Supreme Court to reveal how Justice O’Connor helped craft landmark decisions on abortion, affirmative action, and a host of other critical issues. Joan Biskupic has broken new ground in reporting on O’Connor’s life and historic role on the high court. This lively, fast-paced account will make people rethink how they view this extraordinary woman and her fellow justices. An indispensable read for anyone interested in politics, the law, and power as exercised by one of the most fascinating women of our time.” -Andrea Mitchell Sandra Day O'Connor, America's first woman justice, became the axis on which the Supreme Court turned. She was called the most powerful woman in America, and it was often said that to gauge the direction of American law, one need look only to O'Connor's vote. Then, just one year short of a quarter century on the bench, she surprised her colleagues and the nation by announcing her retirement. Drawing on information from once-private papers of the justices, hundreds of interviews with legal and political insiders, and the insight gained from nearly two decades of covering the Supreme Court, Joan Biskupic examines O'Connor's remarkable career, providing an in-depth account of her transformation from tentative jurist to confident architect of American law. The portrait that emerges is of a complex and multifaceted woman: lawyer, politician, legislator, and justice, as well as wife, mother, A-list society hostess, and competitive athlete. To all appearances, she was the polite lady in pearls, handbag on her arm. But in the back rooms of politics and the law, she was a determined, focused strategist. O'Connor was the feminist who, rather than rebel against the male-dominated system, worked from within -- and succeeded. As Biskupic demonstrates, Justice O'Connor became much more than a "first." During her twenty-four-year tenure, she wrote the decisions on some of the most controversial social battles of our time. O'Connor's tie-breaking opinions on issues such as abortion rights, affirmative action, the death penalty, and religious freedom will have a lasting effect far into the future. O'Connor also cast one of the five votes that cut off the Florida recounts and allowed George W. Bush to take the White House in the 2000 contested presidential election. With an eye to the American people and a keen sense of public attitudes, she worked behind the scenes to shape the law and transform the legal standards by which future cases will be decided. From O'Connor's isolated upbringing on the Lazy B ranch in Arizona through her time as a state legislator to her rise as a justice -- along the way confronting her own personal challenges and crises, including breast cancer -- Biskupic presents a vivid, astute depiction of the justice -- and of the woman beneath the black robe. In so doing, Sandra Day O'Connor also provides an unprecedented look inside the exclusive, famously secretive High Court.
In one federal case tried in Austin, Texas a pro-se tax protester actually thanked Judge Garcia for the fairness of the process after the protester had been convicted by the jury.... Judge Garcia has brought dignity and compassion to his courtrooms for over thirty years."Tom Moore, Assistant United states Attorney, San Antonio. Judge Hippo inspired me to become a lawyer. I am blessed to have him as a mentor. He is my oldest son's godfather, a role he fulfills for the children of so many of his friends who love him as a part of their families"Thomas J. Forestier, Haynes and Boone, L.L.P. "To give dignity to a person is above all things."The Honorable H.F. Garcia's motto Hippo Garcia was short, fat, and poor, and never number one in school or sports. His experience in World War II caused him to drop his shyness and to step out to accomplish positive something for many people. One insightful friend recognized his hidden capability and persuaded him to enter college and law school. After graduation his intelligence and understanding of people expanded in ways that almost no one-including himself-expected. His legal work for the people took him to the highest level of law practice in Texas. He became the first Mexican-American appointed United States District Judge Western District of Texas. His motto: "To give dignity to a person is above all things.
Introduction -- Strategic Goals and Metrics for Quantum Industrial Base Assessment -- The United States' Quantum Industrial Base -- China's Quantum Industrial Base -- Findings and Recommendations.
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