Today’s TTT is a “Fall Freebie”. As it happens, since I resumed doing regular Teaser Tuesdays in early October of 2022, I have made a point of sharing my favorite Teasers for the last year around that time.

First, though, today’s Teaser Tuesday, from 1932:

Hitler remained unswayed. “In any case,” he challenged his foreign press chief, “what part does Churchill play? He is in opposition and no one pays any attention to him.”
“People,” the frustrated Hanfstaengl answered, tossing caution to the wind, “say the same thing about you.”

That passage is particularly interesting because Churchill and Hitler come very close to talking face to face before either is in power — one wonders if any alt-history writers have tried to create a rapport from their hotel near-miss.

Top Ten Teaser Tuesdays

The belief in the inevitability of the past — that whatever happened had to happen — is the great enemy of learning from history. Lars Brownworth, IN DISTANT LANDS

In my lifetime, in my part of the world, the notion and meaning of ‘home’ has steadily crumbled under this external pressure until it is little more than a word. In a Machine anticulture, the home is a dormitory, probably owned by a landlord or a bank, in which two or more people of varying ages and degrees of biological relationship sleep when they’re not out being employed by a corporation, or educated by the state in preparation for being employed by a corporation. The home’s needs are met through pushing buttons, swiping screens or buying-in everything from food to furniture; for who has time for anything else, or has been taught the skills to do otherwise? Phones long ago replaced hearth fires. Handily, a phone, unlike a fire, can be kept under the pillow in case something urgent happens elsewhere while we sleep. We wouldn’t want to miss anything.

Paul Kingsnorth, AGAINST THE MACHINE

To say that Stephen Douglas lived and breathed politics is to make apt use of a stale cliche. He scheduled his wedding for the narrow window between the 1856 election and the opening of a new session of Congress — after courting his Adele Curtis on the campaign trail. – ARGUING UNTIL DOOMSDAY

Hurrying means that you miss out on many things. Riding a train will take you far, but it’s a misconception to think that this will give you more insight. Flowers in the hedgerow and birds in the treetops are accessible only to the person who walks on their own two feet. – THE CAT WHO SAVED BOOKS

The house of my soul is too cramped for you to enter: make it more spacious. It is falling to ruin; repair it. Much inside it offends your sight; I know it and I confess it. […] But I, I slipped away in the days of my youth, and wandered from you, my God, far afield from your steadfastness. And I made of my own self a kingdom of want. – – THE CONFESSIONS, St Augustine

Back in Washington, Lincoln came down with what doctors diagnosed as “varioloid,” a mild form of smallpox. So now he and Tad both were sick—though Tad at least was improving. Where were the office seekers? Lincoln quipped. Now he had something he could give everybody. – WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE

“We need to work this out,” Burke said. “I don’t want to have to keep shooting people.”
“We got plenty.” – DOUBLE PLAY, Robert Parker

“If Aliens landed in Los Angeles, their first impression might be that Earth’s dominant life-form is the automobile. An obvious conclusion. When one gets injured, another version of that life-form shows up to haul it away and get repaired. Some of the larger life-forms on the freeway carry multiple automobiles within them. To the Aliens, these car haulers are surely pregnant.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson, Take Me To Your Leader

“When you talk to [John F. Kennedy] or see him you always have the impression that his big white teeth are ready to bite off a huge hunk of life. There is determination in his green Irish eyes. He has two backbones: his own and his fathers. Somehow he has hit the bulls-eye in every respect. He can’t fail.” – Inga Petersen, quoted in THE LETTERS OF JFK.

“Jack, oh, Jack! What have they done?!” – FIVE DAYS IN NOVEMBER

Odysseus openly laughed. ‘Oh my goodness, you’ve never seen such a rocky, scrubby, barren, unforgiving spot,’ he said. ‘It’s all our farmers can do to grow weeds there, let alone cereals and fruit. We have the sourest wine, the raggediest sheep, the scrawniest cattle of any island in the wide Ionian Sea. Trees and houses are blown down every year in the gales. Some years, the rain never comes, and the earth turns to sand. Other years, the whole island slops with mud. Believe me, Ithaca is no Ogygia. But it’s something else … it’s …’ His eyes now filled with tears and the word came out hoarsely, ‘… home.’ ODYSSEY, Stephen Fry.