Refru

The Skylight Room

elquemero — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 09:37:36 +0000

First Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years.

Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker’s manner of receiving the admission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker’s parlours.

Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second- floor-back at $8. Convinced by her second-floor manner that it was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of his brother’s orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double front room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper.

If you survived Mrs. Parker’s scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder’s large hall room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder’s room was not vacant.

He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would pay something on his rent.

Then–oh, then–if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word” Clara,” she would show you her back, and march downstairs.

Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7×8 feet of floor space at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or storeroom.

The Story of An Hour

elquemero — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 09:34:14 +0000

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

Snowball In Hell

elquemero — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 09:27:00 +0000

Pearl scrambled out of her cab before it stopped. She darted across the shining wet sidewalk, past the fish sculptured fountains, spumes of white shooting into the dusk, and disappeared through the side entrance of Union Station. Nathan swore, finally found a parking slot, and turned the engine off.

He was out of the car, and loping across the wet and oily lot, following Pearl as he’d been following her since the moment she sneaked out of Sid Szabo’s apartment building and into a waiting taxi.
Inside Union Station was a madhouse. Porters hustled, families greeted and friends good-byed, the sheer volume of sound rising from the marble floors and Spanish tiles, soaring up and disappearing into the cathedral-high ceiling and the gigantic iron chandeliers. Nathan scanned the milling crowd for Pearl’s hat — a silly little fur doughnut balancing on Pearl’s silly little platinum head. But there was no sign of either the hat or Pearl as he avoided small children, animal carriers, and stacks of luggage, pushing his way through the mob of holiday travelers and GIs.
In answer to his urgent question, the gateman jerked his thumb towards the wide entrance leading to the tracks.
There was only one train at the platform, and it was starting to move.
Nathan ran, swinging himself up the steps as the train began to pick up speed. It took him a moment to catch his breath. He mopped his face on his rain-damp coat, and then set out to find Pearl in the crowded coaches.
by Josh Lanyon

Is it ever going to stop?

elquemero — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 09:20:59 +0000

It was about to rain one afternoon. The sky was dark and the clouds were grey. A little boy wanted to go outside to play. He had been a good boy and stayed indoors the whole day. Therefore, he went out. But as soon as he got out, the rain started pouring. There was a heavy pour of rains.

“Rain, rain, please go away. Come again another day,” said the little boy.
But the rain did not go away The little boy quickly ran back into the house. He was sad and frustrated.
Lana stared out the window at the pouring rain. “Is it ever going to stop?” She wondered.
It was then that she saw him. He walked with a steady pace. He did not get wet. The sight of him sent a shiver down Lana’s spine. She left the window quickly and began shoving items into a bag. She had to escape before he came.
She picked up a photograph. For a moment she hesitated, looking at it. They were all so happy then. There was her little brother, Joseph. He had only been five. And there was her mother and father. She missed that all so much.
She stuffed the photo in the bag and hurried toward the back door. The whole house shuddered and she was knocked to the floor. He was breaking the door down.
Lana picked herself up and turned the knob of the back door. It was locked. Quickly she fumbled in her pocket for her keys. Without luck, she glanced over at the desk. They were sitting there, just out of her reach.
The house shuddered again. The door wouldn’t hold much longer.
Lana ran over to the desk, grabbed the keys, and ran back to the door. She fumbled for a moment with them and put the key in the keyhole.
The man hit the door again. This time Lana heard wood splintering.
She unlocked the door, and it swung open. She stepped outside and looked up at the sky. The rain fell down on her face.
There! She saw them! Her people had come for her. One of them stretched out her hand. Lana spread her wings and flew upwards. She had escaped! Her fingertips brushed the hand of the other.
It was then that she felt his icy grip around her ankle.

There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless

elquemero — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 09:13:39 +0000

On one of the world’s largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which is a county of New York State.

The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898.With a census-estimated 2013 population of 8,405,837 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km2), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world.

By 2013 census estimates, the New York City metropolitan region remains by a significant margin the most populous in the United States, as defined by both the Metropolitan Statistical Area (19.9 million residents) and the Combined Statistical Area (23.5 million residents).

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Roads We Ride Anywhere

elquemero — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 09:18:11 +0000

Back in the days when I use to race at the Marymoor Velodrome I had a rival know as “the worm”. Now I can’t even remember the guys real name but he belonged to the Rainbow Team.

At the time it was the largest team in the state where Olympic and World Champion Rebecca Twigg was just making her mark on the map. Rainbow had a track style at the time of not attacking. Just follow all the moves and wait for the sprint. Not a bad way to race the track, but they never ever attacked.
What’s worse is when in a break they would never work. Of course this tended to really piss off some of the other teams, me included. Well, the worm was really a pretty good road rider, he was small and slim. He really only rode the track for training, but he was strong enough to sit in on any of the breaks and get a third place once in a great while.
There was something about the worm that just rubbed me the wrong way. He was too quite and sneaky. I was a typical showboat sprinter, loud and flashy. I would get so mad at this guy it actually help me get cranked up and race better. So I guess I shouldn’t slight him to much.
One day we were racing a circuit loop race of about five miles at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma. The road is one way and narrow. As we came into the finish I was in the third row of four across. Now if you weren’t in the first or maybe second row you just weren’t gona be a factor in the finish. But of course this doesn’t stop most of the guys for thinking they can pull something off.
A dangerous situation to say the least. I’m just sitting in watching things develop with about 500 yards to go. I’m on the outside next to the edge of the road when I hear someone coming in the packed dirt and gravel next to me, it’s the worm. Now we’re moving pretty fast at this point and the worm looks at me and says “let me in”, because there are spectators dead ahead.

Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans

elquemero — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 09:12:31 +0000

Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere.Bears are found on the continents of North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.
Common characteristics of modern bears include large bodies with stocky legs, long snouts, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and short tails. While the polar bear is mostly carnivorous, and the giant panda feeds almost entirely on bamboo, the remaining six species are omnivorous with varied diets.
With the exception of courting individuals and mothers with their young, bears are typically solitary animals. They are generally diurnal, but may be active during the night (nocturnal) or twilight (crepuscular), particularly around humans. Bears possess an excellent sense of smell and, despite their heavy build and awkward gait, are adept runners, climbers, and swimmers. In autumn, some bear species forage large amounts of fermented fruits, which affects their behaviour. Bears use shelters, such as caves and burrows, as their dens; most species occupy their dens during the winter for a long period (up to 100 days) of sleep similar to hibernation.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

elquemero — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 09:10:02 +0000

In philosophy, ideas are usually construed as mental representational images of some object. Ideas can also be abstract concepts that do not present as mental images.[1] Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being.The capacity to create and understand the meaning of ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of human beings. In a popular sense, an idea arises in a reflexive, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious reflection, for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place.
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Plato
René Descartes
Charles Sanders Peirce
David Hume

I like coffee because it gives me the illusion that I might be awake

elquemero — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 09:08:45 +0000

Coffee is a brewed beverage prepared from the roasted or baked seeds of several species of an evergreen shrub of the genus Coffea. The two most common sources of coffee beans are the highly regarded Coffea arabica, and the “robusta” form of the hardier Coffea canephora.The latter is resistant to the coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), but has a more bitter taste. Coffee plants are cultivated in more than 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Once ripe, coffee “berries” are picked, processed and dried to yield the seeds inside. The seeds are then roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor, before being ground and brewed to create coffee.
Coffee is a major export commodity: it was the top agricultural export for twelve countries in 2004, the world’s seventh-largest legal agricultural export by value in 2005, and “the second most valuable commodity exported by developing countries,” from 1970 to circa 2000. This last fact is frequently misstated; see commodity market, below. Further, green (unroasted) coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. Some controversy is associated with coffee cultivation and its impact on the environment. Consequently, organic coffee is an expanding market.
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It is not down in any map; true places never are

elquemero — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 09:05:22 +0000

The orientation of a map is the relationship between the directions on the map and the corresponding compass directions in reality. The word “orient” is derived from Latin oriens, meaning East.In the Middle Ages many maps, including the T and O maps, were drawn with East at the top (meaning that the direction “up” on the map corresponds to East on the compass). Today, the most common – but far from universal – cartographic convention is that North is at the top of a map.

Maps from non-Western traditions are oriented a variety of ways. Old maps of Edo show the Japanese imperial palace as the “top”, but also at the centre, of the map. Labels on the map are oriented in such a way that you cannot read them properly unless you put the imperial palace above your head
Medieval European T and O maps such as the Hereford Mappa Mundi were centred on Jerusalem with East at the top. Indeed, prior to the reintroduction of Ptolemy’s Geography to Europe around 1400, there was no single convention in the West. Portolan charts, for example, are oriented to the shores they describe.
Maps of cities bordering a sea are often conventionally oriented with the sea at the top.
Route and channel maps have traditionally been oriented to the road or waterway they describe.

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