Houstonians,
It is very important to the City of Houston that we have a complete and accurate count for the 2010 Census. We lose an estimated $1,700 per person per year for everyone not counted. Please be on the lookout for the Census form when it arrives in March, fill it out immediately and mail it back immediately. Please ask your friends and neighbors to do the same. Thank you in advance for your participation.
Annise D. Parker
Mayor
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Keith Johnston is the founder of improv comedy. The passage below comes from his second book, Impro for Storytellers, which elaborates on many of the ideas from his seminal first book, Impro.
Be Average
A student still looks up-tight, so I say, ‘Are you trying your best?’
‘Of course!’
‘Is that a good strategy?’
‘If I don’t try I won’t get …
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The following excerpt is from A View to a Death in the Morning by Matt Cartmill. My sister sent me the excerpt and said the book’s aim was to “trace the history of the symbolism of hunting (mostly in the West) and changes in humanity’s understanding of nature as it relates to hunting, so as …
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This description of a Swedish Viking’s funeral in the 10th century was written by Ibn Fadlan, an Arab traveler, who saw it first hand:
One day I learnt that one of their chieftains had died. He was placed apart in a grave which was covered over for ten days until clothing for him had been cut out …
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These two quotes are from The Mammoth Book of Eye-Witness Histories, edited by Jon E. Lewis. They are both translations from the original texts:
A Schoolboy’s Day, Sumer, c. 2000 BC
Anonymous
[The Sumerians of Mesopotamia (now Iraq), built the first cities, the first state. They invented writing and the formal education of children.]
Arriving at school in the morning I …
BC; and Hunting Crocodiles, Egypt, c. 450 BC’">Read More →
“I am telling it. If I tell the whole truth just as it happened I shan’t spare myself. My first idea was a—Karamazov one. Once I was bitten by a centipede, brother, and laid up a fortnight with fever from it. Well, I felt a centipede biting at my heart then—a noxious insect, you understand? …
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One of my favorite short story writers, Heinrich Böll was a German writer awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize in Literature. The following story is from The Stories of Heinrich Böll and was translated by Leila Vennewitz:
The Man With the Knives
Jupp held the knife by the tip of the blade, letting it joggle idly up and …
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“You see, Alyosha,” Grushenka turned to him with a nervous laugh. “I was boasting when I told Rakitin I had given away an onion, but it’s not to boast I tell you about it. It’s only a story, but it’s a nice story. I used to hear it when I was a child from Matryona, …
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This short story is by Haruki Murakami. I copied it from this website.
On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning.
One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo’s fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.
Tell you the truth, she’s not that good-looking. She doesn’t stand out in any …
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Duotrope, a searchable database listing over 2,000 plus publications, is an invaluable resource for writers like me who need help finding a home for their work. That last book or article you read and were telling everyone about may not have ever been published if the writer didn’t know what publisher to submit to. Duotrope …
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