My favorite optimists.

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The Clicket-Gate Chronicles

The Church taught that women's bodies ran hot and thus they always desired sex and acts of fornication. Thus marriage and sex within marriage was the only way to control a woman's desires. Women were forbidden to have sex during Lent, Advent, Feast Days, Fast Days, Easter Week, Sundays, Wednesdays and Saturdays... Women were also forbidden to have sex when they were menstruating, pregnant, and for a 40-day period after giving birth or when they were breastfeeding.  Free sex days= Lady Day; May Day, and alternate Tuesdays. The Church believed that both men AND women needed to produce seed to create a child; it was therefore necessary that a woman obtained an orgasm. The burning and eternal question was (and perhaps is), how do we achieve this ? The survival of the Tudor Dynasty depends on this singular goal. CAST Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. An unemployed privateer (“Sea Dog”), Sir Percy Januvia. Sir William Butts, physician to HRH King Henry VIII.  Thomas Cromwell...
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Pharmaceutica: HEROES GIVE HAPPY ENDINGS

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Getting to Know Mother Russia, Then and Now

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I majored in Russian Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania back when Perestroika had paved the way for an economic rebirth and a feeling of friendship. After Mr. Gorbachev had “torn down” tangibly oppressive walls, he also opened the floodgates for idealistic young Americans to master Russian language and culture. I'm not sure how I intended to actually APPLY my degree. At one point, I fantasized about the romantic life of a career diplomat. Working for a profitable American company that needed Russian-speaking employees to forge further economic ties also seemed possible. As it turns out, my degree was good for two things. Our childhood conception of Russians. First, I fell in love with Russian literature. Russian poetry is a bit too hand-wringingly dramatic (too much beating of the breast) for my tastes, but Dostoevsky and Tolstoy so perfectly capture the nuances of not just the Russian spirit but the universality of the human condition. The secon...
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