【導(dǎo)讀】1. BookandLife. TheYearofWandering

　　

【正文】 ress code and tell your date in advance what to wear. When your food arrives, proper dinning etiquette requires you to eat at a moderate pace so that you have time to talk. A good measure of how fast you should eat is to count 10 seconds between each mouthful and it’s a bad dining etiquette if you gobble down your food and you spend the rest of the time watching your date eat. Don’t slurp your soup, smack your lips, or chew with your mouth open. Nothing is more unsightly than watching someone talk and chew their food at the same time. Your napkin should be placed on your lap at all times. Don’t tuck it into your belt or use it as a bib. If you have to get up, place it neatly on your seat. When eating, insert your fork straight in your mouth. Don’t place your fork in the side of your mouth as it increases the chances of food sliding away, which could be very embarrassing. If you get food stuck in your mouth don’t pick it out with your fingers or fork at the table. Excuse yourself and go to the restroom and get it out with a toothpick. When dinning, keep your eyes on your date at all times and try to smile between mouthfuls. Occasionally, you should make an effort to show some interest and ask questions like, “How do you like the beef?” If she needs anything, you are the one who is supposed to flag down the waiter by a gentle wave of the hand until someone notices you. A Divided House Cannot Stand If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. “ A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved。 I do not expect the house to fall。 but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will bee all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall bee alike lawful in all the States, old as well 6 as new, North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost plete legal bination— piece of machinery, so to speak—pounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design and concert of action among its chief architects from the beginning. Disrupting My Comfort Zone I was 45 years old when I decided to learn how to surf. They say that life is tough enough. But I guess I like to make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the time. Every day and on purpose. That39。s because I believe in disrupting my fort zone. When I started out in the entertainment business, I made a list of people that I thought would be good to me. Not people who could give me a job or a deal, but people who could shake me up, teach me something, challenge my ideas about myself and the world. So I started calling up experts in all kinds of fields. Some of them were worldfamous. Of course, I didn39。t know any of these people and none of them knew me. So when I called these people up to ask them for a meeting, the response wasn39。t always friendly. And even when they agreed to give me some of their time, the results weren39。t always what one might describe as pleasant. Take, for example, Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb. It took me a year of begging and more begging to get to him to agree to meet with me. And then what happened? He ridiculed me and insulted me. But that was okay. I was hoping to learn something from him—and I did, even if it was only that I39。m not that interesting to a physicist with no taste for our pop culture. Over the last 30 years, I39。ve produced more than 50 movies and 20 television series. I39。m successful and, in my business, pretty well known. So why do I continue to subject myself to this sort of thing? The answer is simple: Disrupting my fort zone, bombarding myself with challenging people and situations— this is the best way that I know to keep growing. And to paraphrase a biologist I once met, if you39。re not growing, you39。re dying. So maybe I39。m not the best surfer on the north shore, but that39。s okay. The disfort, the uncertainty, the physical and mental challenge that I get from this— all the things that too many of us spend our time and energy trying to avoid— they are precisely the things that keep me in the game. Two Ways of Thinking of History There are two ways of thinking of history. There is, first, history regarded as a way of looking at other things, really the temporal aspect of anything, from the universe to this nib with which I am writing. Everything has its history. There is the history of the universe, if only we knew it— and we know something of it, if we do not know much. Nor is the contrast so great, when you e to think of it, between the universe and this pennib. A mere pennib has quite a considerable history. There is, to begin with, what has been written with it, and that might be something quite important. After all it was probably only one quillpen or a couple that wrote Hamlet. Whatever has been written with the pennib is part of its History. In addition to that there is the history of its manufacture: this particular nib