Duct Tape & Baling Wire
Duct Tape & Baling Wire

Author: Kevin Rosenberg

Publisher:

Published: 2021-06

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 9781737163312

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A modern-day Horatio Alger story that details the struggles of life as an entrepreneur and what it takes to grow a street stand in Brooklyn into a nationally recognized business. My narrative unfolds as I'm hiding from the Mob as a young boy after my dad tried to rob a bank in order to pay back a gambling debt or hunting submarines from the deck of a guided missile frigate as a Naval Officer. You're right there with me for the journey as we're strapped into a Navy jet tumbling out of the sky at 8,000' a minute or walking up to a small Brooklyn shop in the morning wondering if we'll find a seizure notice.I achieved the success I had dreamed about, was honored by my industry, and featured in the NY Times, ABC News, Science Channel, Backpacker Magazine to name a few, but was then caught off guard as my world suddenly collapsed. I lost everything and was forced to consider bankruptcy. Filled with a mixture of defeat and defiance I waged a seemingly Quixotic one man war against the multi-billion dollar student loan industry and did the impossible, I won! This precedent setting case was widely covered by the media and will likely make news again as it heads towards the Supreme Court. This is the story of how I got there. How a former Naval Officer with an advanced degree and the founder of a million dollar company, ended up in bankruptcy. 'Duct Tape & Baling Wire' dispels the myth about who suffers under the current heavy handed, very one sided, student loan system. My story shatters the straw man debtor that the banks have created, the mythical avocado toast eating barista with a degree in Sanskrit from a pricy east coast private liberal arts college. I did everything I was supposed to, played by the rules, and still found myself in bankruptcy court. My hope for this book is that it offers hope to those currently lost in the darkness and provides some insight into who really declares bankruptcy looking for a second chance.

Wisdom of the Last Farmer
Wisdom of the Last Farmer

Author: David Mas Masumoto

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-06

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1439182426

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It was when David Mas Masumoto's father had a stroke on the sprawling fields of their farm that the son looked with new eyes on the land where he and generations of his family have toiled for decades. Masumoto -- an organic farmer working the land in California's Central Valley -- farms stories as he farms peaches. In Wisdom of the Last Farmer, an impassioned memoir of revitalization and redemption, he finds the natural connections between generation and succession, fathers and children, booms and declines as he tells the story of his family and their farm. He brings us to the rich earth of America's Fruit Basket, under the vine trellises and canes where grapes are grown, and to the fruit orchards flush with green before harvest, where he uncovers and preserves the age-old wisdom that is fast disappearing in our modern, information-driven world -- and that is urgently needed in this time of food crises and social disruption. Masumoto sees the price the family has paid to grow complex heirloom peaches -- when the market rewards tasteless, big, and red fruits -- and the challenges of maintaining traditions and integrity while working in the modern, high-pressure agricultural marketplace. As his father's health declines along with the profitability of the family farm, Masumoto has the further hard work of nursing his father back to health -- becoming master to the teacher who once schooled him -- and is driven beyond economic concerns to even larger questions of life, death, and renewal. In his gorgeous, lyrical prose, Masumoto conjures the realities of farming life while weaving in the history of American agriculture over the past century, encapsulating universal themes of work along with wisdom that could be gleaned only from the earth. By the end of the workday, he understands the feeling of accomplishment when you've done your best...and discovers that it's when he lets go -- of both his father and control of nature -- that wisdom manifests itself. And, when Masumoto's daughter intends to return to the family farm, hope is found in the generations. In the quiet eloquence of Wisdom of the Last Farmer, you will see how your own destiny is involved in the future of your food, the land, and the farm.

The Great Cow-Mission
The Great Cow-Mission

Author: Kevin Weatherby

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2011-03-11

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 1456750100

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For years, there are things that humans have been searchin' for. Books have been written. Legends have been passed down from generation to generation. Expeditions have been organized and lives have even been lost. I think it's time we finally called in some cowboys, their horses, and their cowdogs to help find some of these things.

Creative Encounters, Appreciating Difference
Creative Encounters, Appreciating Difference

Author: Sam Gill

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-11-15

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1498580882

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Across the world from personal relationships to global politics, differences—cultural, religious, racial, gender, age, ability—are at the heart of the most disruptive and disturbing concerns. While it is laudable to nurture an environment promoting the tolerance of difference, Creative Encounters, Appreciating Difference argues for the higher goal of actually appreciating difference as essential to creativity and innovation, even if often experienced as stressful and complex. Even encounters that are apparently harmful and negatively valued (arguments, conflict, war, oppression) usually heighten the potential for creativity, innovation, movement, action, and identity. Drawing on classic encounters that have played a significant role in the founding of the academic study of religion and the social sciences, this book explores in some depth the dynamics of encounter to reveal both its problematic and creative aspects and to develop perspectives and strategies to assure encounters both include the appreciation of difference and also are recognized as creative and innovative. The two examples most extensively considered show that the academic study of the peoples indigenous to North America and to Australia involved creative constructions (concoctions) of primary examples in order to establish and give authority to academic theories and definitions. Rather than damning these examples as “bad scholarship,” this book considers them to be encounters engendering creative constructions that are distinctive to academia, yet their potential for harm must be understood. Most important to the book is a persistent development of perspectives and strategies for understanding and approaching encounters in order to assure the appreciation of difference is accompanied by the potential for creativity and innovation. Specific perspectives and strategies are related to naming, moving, gesture, and play and, particularly relevant to religion, the development of an aesthetic of impossibles. Since these historical examples engage highly relevant present concerns —the distinction of real and fake, truth and lie, map and territory—the threading essays show how these more or less classic examples might contribute to appreciating these contemporary concerns that are generated in the presence of difference.

My, My
My, My

Author: D. Smith

Publisher: Page Publishing Inc

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1644241692

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My, My by D. W. Smith [--------------------------------------------]

Blizzard
Blizzard

Author: H. W. "Buzz" Bernard

Publisher: Bell Bridge Books

Published: 2015-02-16

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1611946107

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Everyone laughs at what southerners call a "snowstorm." A half-inch of the white stuff, and Atlanta panics. No one's laughing this time. A freakish combination of weather elements surpasses even the experts' predictions. Suddenly much of the upper South is covered in several feet of snow. There's never been a storm like this in the region before. Never in recorded history. For Atlanta executive J.C. Riggins, the storm is only one of the killers he'll have to face. In a desperate bid to save his job, his company, and quite possibly his young son's life, Riggins must transport a defense contract to North Carolina. The deadline can't be missed. With airports and roads closed, Riggins sets out in an SUV through a stunned countryside where no one can help him if trouble happens. Which it does, the moment a dangerous criminal joins him for the ride. H.W. "Buzz" Bernard is an Air Force veteran and retired Weather Channel meteorologist. His 2010 hurricane thriller, Eyewall, became a number one bestseller in ebook. Visit him at buzzbernard.com.

The Farmer Was Lonely
The Farmer Was Lonely

Author: Byron Lehman

Publisher: Byron Lehman

Published:

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13:

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Dane Hollister is a young former whose wife left him. His future appears to be one of loneliness. However, he is reunited with an older brother, niece, and nephew. Unexpectedly they are left with Dane to care for. Purpose returns to his life but doubt follows.

Changing Season
Changing Season

Author: David Mas Masumoto

Publisher: Heyday.ORIM

Published: 2018-01-20

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 159714374X

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In a series of personal essays, the organic farmer and author of Epitaph for a Peach prepares to hand his family’s eighty-acre farm to his daughter. How do you become a farmer? The real questions are: What kind of person do you want to be? Are you willing to change? How do you learn? What is your vision for the future? In this poignant collection of essays, David Mas Masumoto prepares for one of life’s greatest transitions. After four decades of working the land, he will pass down his beloved peach farm to his daughter, Nikiko. Echoing Nikiko’s words that “all of the gifts I have received from this life are not only worthy of sharing, but must be shared,” Mas reflects on topics as far ranging as the art of pruning, climate change, and the prejudice his family faced during and after World War II: essays that, whether humorous or heartbreaking, explore what it means to pass something on. Nikiko’s voice is present too, as she relates the myriad lessons she has learned from her father in preparation for running the farm as a queer mixed-race woman. Both farmers feel less than totally set for the future that lies ahead; indeed, Changing Season addresses the uncertain future of small-scale agriculture in California. What is unquestionable, though, is the family’s love for their vocation—and for each other.