Will Dowd takes us on a whimsical journey through one year of New England weather in this engaging collection of essays. As unpredictable as its subject, Areas of Fog combines wit and poetry with humor and erudition. A fun, breezy, and discursive read, it is an intellectual game that exposes the artificiality of genres. Will Dowd is a writer and artist based outside Boston. He obtained his MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, where he received a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship; an MS from MIT, serving as a John Lyons Fellow; and a BA from Boston College, as a Presidential Scholar.
“This impassioned book invites readers to the deep end of life where authentic soul work and human transformation become pressing concerns.” —Publishers Weekly 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medalist in the Aging/Death & Dying Category From bestselling author Parker J. Palmer comes a brave and beautiful book for all who want to age reflectively, seeking new insights and life-giving ways to engage in the world. “Age itself,” he says, “is no excuse to wade in the shallows. It’s a reason to dive deep and take creative risks.” Looking back on eight decades of life—and on his work as a writer, teacher, and activist—Palmer explores what he’s learning about self and world, inviting readers to explore their own experience. In prose and poetry—and three downloadable songs written for the book by the gifted Carrie Newcomer—he meditates on the meanings of life, past, present, and future. With compassion and chutzpah, gravitas and levity, Palmer writes about cultivating a vital inner and outer life, finding meaning in suffering and joy, and forming friendships across the generations that bring new life to young and old alike. “This book is a companion for not merely surviving a fractured world, but embodying—like Parker—the fiercely honest and gracious wholeness that is ours to claim at every stage of life.” —Krista Tippett, New York Times-bestselling author of Becoming Wise “A wondrously rich mix of reality and possibility, comfort and story, helpful counsel and poetry, in the voice of a friend . . . This is a book of immense gratitude, consolation, and praise.” —Naomi Shihab Nye, National Book Award finalist
Sometime in the first quarter of the 13th century a number of works were written for anchoresses, women who lived as religious recluses in cells adjoining churches. The most influential is Ancrene Wisse (A Guide for Anchoresses), which discusses in great detail the daily life of the anchoress, both outer and inner. This work gives a detailed sense of a powerful and multi-faceted spirituality different from that of other mystics.
If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...
Eddie didn't favor anyone in his family. Fair, blonde, and green-eyed, he stood in sharp contrast to the other darker-complected, dark-haired, blue-eyed members. The difference created a rift in the family fabric and his mother singled him out for abuse, irrationally holding him responsible for the family's turmoil. Little Eddie struggled with the severity of his maltreatment but, by age eleven, could no longer handle the circumstances of his life. He decided his only escape would be to die, that by conscious will, he could simply resolve to give up life and cease to exist. Eddie's mind, alerted to his decision, and believing the ultimate goal for any entity was to continue, regardless of form or quality of life, was determined to survive. Panicked at the threat of cessation, his mind made a desperate decision -- it fractured his personality and created Randy from traits that had been repressed in Eddie. Randy, a tough, defiant individual, was created to bring new energy, new life, and stand in defense of the defeated, accepting Eddie. Rising to the challenge, he accepted the responsibility of his creation and was fiercely focused to protecting Eddie while endeavoring to create new circumstances for the life they shared. Randy was proud of his efforts to save Eddie. He knew he was Eddie's paladin, his champion, created for a noble purpose -- to bring Eddie back from the brink of oblivion. After many struggles, Randy's efforts appeared to be successful and the mind considered the possibility of enjoying the existence he'd insured. It pondered the idea of Eddie being involved with the world, rather than merely persisting through the time allotted for the life. Aware of Eddie's inability to interact with the world around him, the mind again fractured the personality creating Jesse, a new facet, an aesthetic personality, focused to tender feelings of love and friendship -- and aspects which determine quality of life. Jesse felt he was created to experience emotions and appreciate beauty, to evolve the repressed side of the personality, to bring stability to the entity. He believed he was born to search for love, to find the emotional equilibrium that would bring the separate identities into harmony. Developed from suppressed characteristics, Jesse was creative and confident, loving and inquisitive, charming and fun loving. And he was on a quest -- determined to achieve his goal. Without Eddie's awareness of them, Randy and Jesse sought to balance their existence and hoped they were achieving what they saw as a normal life until Jesse experienced an incident which shattered that belief and forced them to realize they had not progressed as far as they thought. Jesse's realization that he had made a terrible mistake was devastating. Jumping to a conclusion, Randy, the controlling personality, in his determination to fend off any challenges to them, felt he must take over to handle the crisis in an effort to protect them...
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“A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy. What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. “Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star).
Loneliness and despair consumes Buddy after the mysterious disappearance of his sister Autumn on her first day of high school. How will he and his best friend Gus save her? There are supernatural elements and mysteries abound in this gripping adventure that leads two best friends on a journey into the unknown, as almost everyone they know forget about Autumn's very existence.
