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Day 15: Best lines?

This “reading three books at a time” thing is HARD. I was able to find my favorite three lines from them so far, though!

Justice: “At a gas station in Orlando, they were selling two-dollar bags of ice for ten dollars [after Hurricane Charley in 2004]. Lacking power for refrigerators or air-conditioning in the middle of August, many people had little choice but to pay up…A seventy-seven-year-old woman fleeing the hurricane with her elderly husband and handicapped daughter was charged $160 per night for a motel room that normally goes for $40.” – Man! I was amazed at how timely this was. With people charging $220 for Lysol (don’t get me started on toilet paper), I’m really interested in the question Sandel is starting to ask about this. “Is it wrong for sellers of goods and services to take advantage of a natural disaster by charging whatever the market will bear?” Is this the right thing to do?

The Year of Less: “I wanted to stop making impulse purchases only to realize I had been fooled by another marketing strategy or sale sign. I wanted to stop wasting money on thing I thought I needed, only to come home and find I already had more than enough. And I really wanted to stop talking myself into buying things I would never end up using.”

And my overall favorite right now, fromĀ The Starless Sea:

In this significant moment, if the boy turns the painted knob and opens the impossible door, everything will change.

But he does not.

Instead, he puts his hands in his pockets.

Part of him decides he is being childish and that he is too old to expect real life to be like books. Another part of him decides that if he does not try he cannot be disappointed and he can go on believing that the door could open even if it is just pretend.

He stands with his hands in his pockets and considers teh door for a moment more before walking away.

The following day his curiosity gets the better of him and he returns to find that the door has been painted over. The brick wall whitewashed to the point where he cannot even discern where, precisely, the door had been.

And so the son of the fortune-teller does not find his way to the Starless Sea.

Not yet.

Published inELA IIIReal World WritingTeaching in the Time of Coronavirus

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