To young couples getting married, the author's wedding gift is a wicker valise fitted with tableware and linen. A card is enclosed which reads: "Make life a picnic." It is his credo. What follows is a collection of articles culled from his contributions to a small town periodical. Reminiscent of Harry Golden's "For Two Cents Plain," his journey takes you through the past century touching briefly on subjects ranging from show biz, WWII, to his friendships with bygone day celebs. With large doses of humor and whimsy, each chapter is a short story which, when linked together reveals much of the writer's biography. His wish for you, the reader, is that Afterthoughts becomes your "picnic" ground!
Poetry is utilizing words as raw materials but instead of creating a product that you can touch it is creating a picture, an idea or story in a meaningful pattern. Thus, you are creating a product that you can't physically touch but it touches you...emotionally, you can't see with your eyes but you can visualize in your mind, and poetry has no limits or barriers. It invokes thoughts and powerful feelings in both listeners and readers. Afterthoughts is an autobiography in which poetry is the chosen literary genre. Each poem is a depiction of love found, love lost, heartbreak, hardship, success, inspiration and much more that I have experienced in my lifetime.
After Charlotte Mason died in 1923, the PNEU held a memorial service in her honor, though (quite appropriately) it more resembled an educational conference. Dozens of friends, acquaintances, admirers, students and fellow educators attended the event. Those who had spent years observing her life and work warmly described her impact on their own lives and careers. These sentiments-some philosophical, some personal-were recorded in the book you are now holding.In Memoriam is biography, memoir and philosophical commentary all in one. It offers the most intimate look at Charlotte Mason from those who knew and loved her best. As you read their touching words, you will come to appreciate the tremendous impact of this gifted woman whose philosophy and method of self-education transformed generations of teachers, parents and students-not only in her life but in her death, as well.
A mysterious group of killers-the Wolves-terrorize the nation. No one knows where they came from or why they murder thousands of innocent civilians. Resi Kepler is a nurse who cares for those injured in the attacks. The Wolves left her without parents, famously taking them as their first victims. When Resi is knocked out during an attack, she discovers a startling ability. She sees the memories of dead Wolf victims in her sleep. Which is insane. And a little awkward considering the number of people dropping dead around her lately. She taps into her favorite defense mechanism: avoidance. She ignores it; acts like it's not happening. If she doesn't acknowledge it, it can't be real. Right? But another person she loves is taken. So, Resi accepts the insanity and dives into the memories of the dead to find the Wolves, save her friend, and avenge her parents. As Resi gets closer to uncovering the mysteries surrounding the Wolves, however, she finds herself undeniably connected to them. She begins to wonder if the killing sprees are really all that bad. In fact, if she stops the terrorists, she thinks more people may die. Is Resi being brainwashed? Are the killings justified? Will she find out why she has this creepy gift? Is she really the one endangering the nation by attempting to disarm the Wolves? ***A new thriller/suspense novel. This action-packed book is simultaneously dark and disturbing, yet fun and comedic. It is sure to keep you glued to every last page!*** ***Editorial Review*** "The Afterthoughts is a truly one of a kind supernatural thriller. Resi Kepler is shocked and outraged by the violence of a domestic terrorist group known as The Wolves. Their violence seems to know no limits as they target men, women, children, and most noteworthy - the hospital. In the midst of violence, something else is happening... One night, Resi has a peculiar dream, as if she is watching first-person memories. The dreams become a startling reality when Resi realizes that the person whose memories she was seeing is dead. "A gripping page-turner, The Afterthoughts will keep you wanting more. Author Rene Fenner skillfully crafts action, suspense, and raw emotion with each word. Vivid characters and exceptional dialogue will envelope you in the story and send your imagination running wild. Rene Fenner is a master of storytelling. You have never read a book like The Afterthoughts and never will again!" - The Lost Chapter Book Review
What happened to Paul Nelson? In the '60s, he pioneered rock & roll criticism with a first-person style of writing that would later be popularized by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer as “New Journalism.” As co-founding editor of The Little Sandy Review and managing editor of Sing Out!, he’d already established himself, to use his friend Bob Dylan’s words, as “a folk-music scholar”; but when Dylan went electric in 1965, Nelson went with him. During a five-year detour at Mercury Records in the early 1970s, Nelson signed the New York Dolls to their first recording contract, then settled back down to writing criticism at Rolling Stone as the last in a great tradition of record-review editors that included Jon Landau, Dave Marsh, and Greil Marcus. Famously championing the early careers of artists like Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Rod Stewart, Neil Young, and Warren Zevon, Nelson not only wrote about them but often befriended them. Never one to be pigeonholed, he was also one of punk rock’s first stateside mainstream proponents, embracing the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. But in 1982, he walked away from it all — Rolling Stone, his friends, and rock & roll. By the time he died in his New York City apartment in 2006 at the age of seventy — a week passing before anybody discovered his body — almost everything he’d written had been relegated to back issues of old music magazines. How could a man whose writing had been so highly regarded have fallen so quickly from our collective memory? With Paul Nelson’s posthumous blessing, Kevin Avery spent four years researching and writing Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writing of Paul Nelson. This unique anthology-biography compiles Nelson’s best works (some of it previously unpublished) while also providing a vivid account of his private and public lives. Avery interviewed almost 100 of Paul Nelson’s friends, family, and colleagues, including several of the artists about whom he’d written.
"Just 'cause I didn't follow the rules doesn't make it my fault that the Space Shuttle almost crashed. Well, okay, maybe it was sort of my fault. But not the part when Pilot O'Brien was spacewalking and I accidentally knocked him halfway to Jupiter, or when I wound up in a space suit and nearly became the first human satellite to orbit the Earth; you can't blame that on me. "Well, okay, maybe that was sort of my fault, too." So begins another hilarious Wally McDoogle MISadventure as our boy blunder stows aboard the Space Shuttle and learns the importance of: OBEYING THE RULES!
From the award-winning author of Five, Six, Seven, Nate! and Better Nate Than Ever comes “a Holden Caulfield for a new generation” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Quinn Roberts is a sixteen-year-old smart aleck and Hollywood hopeful whose only worry used to be writing convincing dialogue for the movies he made with his sister Annabeth. Of course, that was all before—before Quinn stopped going to school, before his mom started sleeping on the sofa…and before the car accident that changed everything. Enter: Geoff, Quinn’s best friend who insists it’s time that Quinn came out—at least from hibernation. One haircut later, Geoff drags Quinn to his first college party, where instead of nursing his pain, he meets a guy—okay, a hot guy—and falls, hard. What follows is an upside-down week in which Quinn begins imagining his future as a screenplay that might actually have a happily-ever-after ending—if, that is, he can finally step back into the starring role of his own life story.
Formation of Character is the fifth volume of Charlotte Mason's Homeschooling series. The chapters stand alone and are valuable to parents of children of all ages. Part I includes case studies of children (and adults) who cured themselves of bad habits. Part II is a series of reflections on subjects including both schooling and vacations (or "stay-cations" as we now call them). Part III covers various aspects of home schooling, with a special section detailing the things that Charlotte Mason thought were important to teach to girls in particular. Part IV consists of examples of how education affected outcome of character in famous writers of her day. Charlotte Mason was a late nineteenth-century British educator whose ideas were far ahead of her time. She believed that children are born persons worthy of respect, rather than blank slates, and that it was better to feed their growing minds with living literature and vital ideas and knowledge, rather than dry facts and knowledge filtered and pre-digested by the teacher. Her method of education, still used by some private schools and many homeschooling families, is gentle and flexible, especially with younger children, and includes first-hand exposure to great and noble ideas through books in each school subject, conveying wonder and arousing curiosity, and through reflection upon great art, music, and poetry; nature observation as the primary means of early science teaching; use of manipulatives and real-life application to understand mathematical concepts and learning to reason, rather than rote memorization and working endless sums; and an emphasis on character and on cultivating and maintaining good personal habits. Schooling is teacher-directed, not child-led, but school time should be short enough to allow students free time to play and to pursue their own worthy interests such as handicrafts. Traditional Charlotte Mason schooling is firmly based on Christianity, although the method is also used successfully by s
