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Friend Of The Sun

$56,072,139.17

Fifty-six million tusheronies burning a hole in my pocket. “What am I going to do with it all?” I ask myself. “If it’s for real,” I say to myself. “They wouldn’t make a mistake of that dimension,” I tell myself.

Songs Of Dawn

Wealth

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, a warm smile, eight pieces of chocolate

Salvaging The Future

Michael Helm On The Virtues Of Junk

Practically, managing a salvage yard is a great way to make a living because there is so much waste in this culture. Fifteen years ago, I dropped out of corporate life and got into salvage — actually, it was called junk back then.

Friend Of The Sun

The House Of Esperanza

Esperanza had informally inherited the house from Salvador Escondido, her husband by common law, who one morning kissed her goodbye at the door, left for work in the fields, and never came back.

From A Distance, Paradise

The children grew rapidly after birth, until they were weaned from the breast, and then never grew again. We never saw any cases of diaper rash because nobody could afford diapers. I had never before thought of diaper rash as a disease of affluence.

Money Versus People

The power that transforms our lives into money is lethal. The whales and redwoods, for example, were gone before the harpoon struck or the ax fell, from the moment they became money. . . . The same with ideas, memories, history, child care, healing, silence, and peace of mind. Capital looked their way; they became dollars and cents.

My Life In Marketing Research

When I returned from Denver to Manhattan last fall I needed a job. My first idea was to be one of those guys who sit on boxes outside discount stores on Dyckman Street watching that no one steals plastic coat hangers — but all those positions were filled. My next plan was to be Santa Claus.