Two Types Of Homeless

On any given night, the homeless can be divided into two groups: those who sleep in free shelters (the "shelter homeless") and those who sleep in places not intended for human habitation, such as bus stations, subway trains, automobiles, doorways, and abandoned buildings. Those who sleep outside the shelters are generally known as the "street homeless," even though many sleep in abandoned buildings, bus stations, and other indoor locations. The distinction between the street and shelter homeless works fairly well on any given night, but it breaks down when we follow people over time. Only a minority of the homeless report having spent all of the past seven nights in the same place. Many report that they were in a shelter one night, a subway station the next, and a friend's home the night after that. - Christopher Jencks

How To Get Hired

in Washington D.C., the National Symphony Orchestra hired Sylvia Alimena to play the French horn. Would she have been hired before the advent of screens? Of course not. the French horn - like the trombone - is a "male" instrument. More to the point, Alimena is tiny. She's five feet tall. In truth, that's an irrelevant fact. As another prominent horn player says, "Sylvia can blow a house down." But if you were to look at her, you would not be able to hear that power, because what you saw would so contradict what you heard. There is only one way to make a proper snap judgment of Sylvia Alemina, and that's from behind a screen. - Malcolm Gladwell

Too Great Expectations

You will have to deal with men with whom you are not yet acquainted. Always commence by thinking of them all the evil imaginable: then you will not have to lower your opinion very much. Do not judge them by your heart, which I believe to be noble and good, and which besides is still young. Despise them as politely as you can: this is the way to be on guard against the petty prejudices and petty passions which will bruise your feelings upon your entry into society. - Alexander Pushkin

The Strength Of Sojourner Truth

Sojourner felt that this was no time to retreat. Against her daughter's wishes, she planned another speaking tour. Before leaving, she had her autobiography updated. Frances Titus, a friend and neighbor who helped Sojourner with her correspondence, would edit and expand the Narrative six times between 1853 and 1884. Sojourner also designed a postcard with her photograph on it. At the bottom was her message: "I sell the shadow to support the substance." She sold it along with her book and hymns. Then, taking Sammy with her, Sojourner went back out on the speaking tour at age sixty-two. - Patricia and Fredrick McKissack

Freemasonry In The American Revolution

During the American War of Independence, when American liberals in the North worked with slaveowners in the south in the struggle against Britain, the British, although they themselves owned black slaves in the West Indies and were engaged in the slave trade, encouraged the slaves of the revolutionaries in Georgia and South Carolina to escape from their masters and join the British garrisons in the ports they held, to work there as labourers. They accepted some of these runaway slaves as members of the British military Freemasons' lodge, though no African-American had been allowed to join any American lodge. - Jasper Ridley

Building The USA

    Every day they measured land with curious instruments and put down marks which we could not understand. They were good men, and we were sorry when they had gone on into the west. They were not soldiers. These were the first white men I ever saw.
   About ten years later some more white men came. These were all warriors. They made their camp on the Gila River south of Hot Springs.At first they were friendly and we did not dislike them, but they were not as good as those who came first.
   After about a year some trouble arose between them and the Indians, and I took the warpath as a warrior, not as a chief. - Geronimo

Self Governing

Nor is our Government to be maintained or our Union preserved by invasions of the rights and powers of the several States. In thus attempting to make our General Government strong we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and states as much as possible to themselves - in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence; not in its control, but in its protection; not in binding the states more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit. - Andrew Jackson