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A selection from The Long Way Home by Karen McQuistion By the time Troy came down the stairs, she had put in an offer on the house. It was crazy and impulsive, which was unlike her, but it felt right. When the realtor explained there could be a delay hearing back from the owner because she was in Europe, Marnie said that was fine. She could wait. When Troy got wind of what she'd done, he was beside himself with joy. In the car after they'd left, he asked, Do you think my mom will let me live here with you? I don't know, Troy. That's a lot to ask. Kimberly had already agreed to let Troy stay until the end of the summer and agreed to future visits to Wisconsin. Marnie was afraid to push her luck. But she has to. He clicked his seatbelt on. Everything is here. Teenagers were all about the absolutes. Everything was here. Nothing was there. As if Las Vegas had nothing to offer, but suburban Wisconsin was a hotbed of activity. It's not that simple, Marnie said. She's your mother. I'm not related to you. His face fell. That bites, he said angrily. What's it to her anyway if I stay here? It's not like she has time for me. To be fair, she has a very demanding career. Give your mother some credit. She runs a multimillion-dollar company. He didn't care about her multimillion-dollar company. She can't make me stay. I'll run away. I'll come back on my own. Marnie started the engine. Troy, don't be that way. I'll call and ask her if you want, but don't count on it, she said, not wanting to get his hopes up. Marnie waited until after the closing on the house to make the call. Once the papers were signed by Kimberly's attorney and the deal was finalized at the end of July, she felt she had a stronger case. She picked up the phone and took a deep breath, ready to launch into a speech about the advantages of having Troy live with her. But when Kimberly answered, Marnie got a surprise. Before she even had a chance to give her argument, Kimberly said, Well, if you could hold on to him for the time being, that would be best. I've got a big project coming up and I can't even see straight right now, she laughed. It's been crazy, Marnie. And you know Troy doesn't really roll with my schedule. She spoke with the familiarity of an old friend, like Marnie would sympathize. Marnie's heart filled with joy. Still, she needed to clarify just to be sure. So he can move with me to the old house and I can enroll him in school for his freshman year? Next to her, Troy held his hands together like he was praying. When Marnie nodded yes in his direction, echoing Kimberly's response, his fist pumped in the air and he got on the phone to text his friends.
Script:
A Selection from O Artful Death by Sarah Stuart Taylor Later, she wasn't sure how she reached the studio. The beam of the flashlight gave her only a foot or so of visibility in the whiteout. Every time she put a ski forward, she feared she was going in the wrong direction, searching for the path through the dark, snow-cloaked trees. But then the light caught the silvery length of the half-frozen river, and she hugged the bank as much as possible, knowing the path led straight to Gilmartin's little studio. It was bitterly cold, and the driving snow made its way under the collar of her parka and down into the ski boots. She kept going, pushing her feet forward, even when they began to throb, when the muscles in her arms began screaming for relief. Just when she thought she was going to collapse, she saw, up ahead, a brown block in all the white. She was there. Sweeney stepped out of the skis and huddled on the porch for a moment, relieved to be out of the driving wind and snow. When she'd recovered, she tried the windows, finding them locked, and pulled fruitlessly at the padlock on the door. It took her a few minutes to find a rock under the snow, but once she had one in her hand, she wrapped her right arm in her scarf and punched the rock through the glass. Then she used it to break away the shards of glass along the window frame and placed her parka over the rough edges of the glass, carefully climbing over the sill. Once she was inside, she put her parka back on and shone the flashlight along the ground, and then up the walls. There was no one there. The studio was a large room with a fireplace against one wall and a row of shelves against the other. It was empty of any furniture, except for an old easel covered with splashes of multicolored oil paint and an army cot pushed up against one wall. But it wasn't empty. On the floor in front of the far wall, Sweeney could see an irregularly shaped heap. She went closer and lifted a brown tarp from a pile of stolen artwork.
Script:
A selection from The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope No great character in American history has been more ill-served by stereotyping, lame biographies, and stuffy hagiography than Susan B. Anthony, the great 19th-century champion of women's rights. This magnificent woman is generally seen as a wizened, tight-lipped old do-gooder who probably hated men, sex, and most of the normal pleasures of life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anthony was a charming, eloquent, and commanding woman who routinely faced down halls of boorish, rude, and obstinate men, and who almost single-handedly created the national strategy that led to the enfranchisement of women. She loved passionately, she worked single-mindedly, and she savored the pleasures of life. At her funeral in 1906, during a raging blizzard in upstate New York, over ten thousand mourners passed by her flag-draped coffin to pay their respects. Telegrams came in from great world leaders. She was pronounced the American Moses from pulpits around the country. Newspapers called her the American Joan of Arc. How do we account for such a life? Anthony began life as a shy Quaker girl, given to melancholy, fragility, and extreme self-doubt. She spent her early years under the care of a clinically depressed mother. As a child, Susan practiced piety and humility, being seen but not heard, as befitted the prevailing view of the well-brought-up American girl. How, then, did she become transformed into one of the most powerful women in American history? How did she become, as many in the day called her, the Napoleon of the women's rights movement? I'm sure you've guessed the answer. She found her dharma and did it on purpose. Susan B. Anthony began to sniff out her life's vocation in her late teens. From that point on, hers is a story of the power of vocation itself to transform personality, of dharma pulling toward its own realization. It is the story of a woman who understood her call and surrendered to it. Watch closely as I tell the story, and you will see Anthony's understanding of her own dharma come into focus, like a telescope at first only hazily focused on a distant star, and then, in a series of consecutive corrections, become sharper and clearer. Eventually the star—the dharma—comes in vividly, brilliantly, nuanced, alive.
