Home Run on Wheels Chronicling the Baseball Trip of a Lifetime while Raising Awareness of the Needs of Children in the Foster System By: Ron Clements In Home Run On Wheels, Ron Clements shows readers what is needed for charities to successfully help children in the foster care system. As he and his wife, Patti, take to the road to visit every MLB stadium in a single season, the story recounts their cross-country adventure, their efforts to get foster families to MLB games, and highlights the generosity of others. This book will open your heart to those in foster care, but also share the Clements' love of baseball and passion for traveling.
"Baseball Joe Home Run King" is another installment in the "Baseball Joe" series written by Lester Chadwick. This book continues the story of Joe Matson, a talented young baseball player, as he faces new challenges and adventures in his baseball career. In "Baseball Joe Home Run King," Joe Matson's reputation as a skilled and dedicated player continues to grow. As the title suggests, the story focuses on Joe's pursuit of becoming a home run king—a player known for hitting impressive home runs during games. Throughout the book, readers follow Joe's journey as he works hard to improve his batting skills, overcome obstacles, and contribute to his team's success. The novel delves into the world of baseball strategy, training, and competition. Readers are treated to detailed descriptions of games, practices, and Joe's interactions with teammates, coaches, and opponents. As Joe faces both triumphs and setbacks, he learns important lessons about perseverance, sportsmanship, and the value of teamwork. "Baseball Joe Home Run King" not only captures the excitement of baseball games but also explores the personal growth and development of its characters. Through Joe's experiences, readers witness his evolution as a player and as a person, making the book a compelling coming-of-age story set within the context of sports. As with other books in the series, "Baseball Joe Home Run King" emphasizes the positive impact of sports on character development and highlights the values of hard work, determination, and dedication. The story serves as both an engaging sports narrative and a reflection on the qualities that contribute to success in athletics and in life.
A collection of wisdom, humor, and tasteless remarks from Vanderbilt University's House Organ magazine: . Every morning when I would leave for work, he would give me the saddest look he could muster. If you know anything about beagles, you know that this is the canine equivalent of the death scene from Camille. When a beagle wants to look sad, he can roll his big brown droopy eyes up at you and pull his ears back, and you will do anything to make him happier. In fact, many beagles earn top commissions in the sales field by giving customers that sad look until they crack and buy whatever the beagle is selling. "I'll buy anything," the customers cry, throwing money at the beagle, "just stop looking at me like that!" . The voice-mail mantra, "Your call is very important to us" is always a lie. If my call were actually important to you, you would answer the phone instead of putting me on hold and playing an orchestral version of the old Buoys hit "Timothy." A portion of all profits from the sale of this book goes to the Jade Pasley Patient and Family Assistance Fund of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
Almost everyone in today's society is hungry for spiritual guidance. In Spiritual Training Wheels, her follow-up to Spiritual Life Savers, Gloria Benish teaches readers how to incorporate spirituality into every moment of their lives. With her warm, personal voice, this renowned healer and author has brought the power of love to thousands across the country through her workshops and healing sessions. With pixielike spunk and an Erma Bombeck sense of humor, she shows readers how they, too, can overcome life's challenges and begin to heal themselves and others -- physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Her simple techniques will help everyone balance their feelings and thoughts, relieve pain, and promote healing from within.In Spiritual Training Wheels, Benish teaches the power of unconditional love to a family in her own home in Montana. While her previous book Spiritual Life Savers featured a weekend-long dialogue between Gloria and one friend, this book concentrates on an entire family. For one day, Gloria Benish hosts a multigenerational family therapy session in which she gives spiritual and practical advice on parenting to the mother and father, and confidential advice to each child. Through a simple meditation, she is able to assist each family member in identifying his or her weaknesses, fears, habits, addictions, and personality traits. With inspirational, down-to-earth guidance and loving support, Gloria offers timeless advice to every type of family member, including men and women with careers, stay-at-home morns, single parents, teenagers, college kids, and senior citizens.Through the problems and experiences of this family, readers will learn to strengthen their ownfamily bonds, and in doing so, prepare to live their own independent, spiritually fulfilling lives.
Trophy wife Darcy McDaniel has just discovered that, thanks to her embezzling husband, her posh, upper-class life is gone for good. Now she's trading her suburban palace for a trailer park and her weekly salon appointments for a job. Darcy needs a new man--fast--one who'll keep her in the manner she darn well deserves. Problem is, the hottest prospect around is the my-way-or-the-highway hunk who's making off with her beloved Mercedes! Ex-cop turned repo man John Stark is sure that hiring the furious blonde in his headlights is a colossal mistake. He knows Darcy's high-maintenance, designer-labels-only type--after all, he's used to taking their cars. But he never expected this hellion to have the smarts and the spunk to go from receptionist to repo agent in record time...or to drive him insane with desire. She's the last thing this tall, dark, and dangerous loner needs...and everything he never knew he wanted.
The Wheels That Drove New York tells the fascinating story of how a public transportation system helped transform a small trading community on the southern tip of Manhattan island to a world financial capital that is home to more than 8,000,000 people. From the earliest days of horse-drawn conveyances to the wonders of one of the world's largest and most efficient subways, the story links the developing history of the City itself to the growth and development of its public transit system. Along the way, the key role of played by the inventors, builders, financiers, and managers of the system are highlighted. New York began as a fur trading outpost run by the Dutch West India Company, established after the discovery and exploration of New York Harbor and its great river by Henry Hudson. It was eventually taken over by the British, and the magnificent harbor provided for a growing center of trade. Trade spurred industry, initially those needed to support the shipping industry, later spreading to various products for export. When DeWitt Clinton built the Erie Canal, which linked New York Harbor to the Great Lakes, New York became the center of trade for all products moving into and out of the mid-west. As industry grew, New York became a magnate for immigrants seeking refuge in a new land of opportunity. The City's population continued to expand. Both water and land barriers, however, forced virtually the entire population to live south of what is now 14th Street. Densities grew dangerously, and brought both disease and conflict to the poorer quarters of the Five Towns. To expand, the City needed to conquer land and water barriers, primarily with a public transportation system. By the time of the Civil War, the City was at a breaking point. The horse-drawn public conveyances that had provided all of the public transportation services since the 1820's needed to be replaced with something more effective and efficient. First came the elevated railroads, initially powered by steam engines. With the invention of electricity and the electric traction motor, the elevated's were electrified, and a trolley system emerged. Finally, in 1904, the City opened its first subway. From there, the City's growth to northern Manhattan and to the "outer boroughs" of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx exploded. The Wheels That Drove New York takes us through the present day, and discusses the many challenges that the transit system has had to face over the years. It also traces the conversion of the system from fully private operations (through the elevated railways) to the fully public system that exists today, and the problems that this transformation has created along the way.
Thomas’s carefully built life has been shattered. Everywhere he turns, he finds tragedy. After being left at the altar, he retreats to a remote castle in the mountains of Northwest Montana to live with an old college friend dying of lupus. But their painfully peaceful seclusion is ripped apart by the news that Thomas’s brother, an Episcopal priest, has killed himself–and his sister-in-law is abandoning her seven-year-old daughter, Catherine, into Thomas’s care. After her unexpected arrival into this grim corner of the world, Catherine slowly breaches the isolation and penetrates the self-absorption. Like the prayer wheel on the wall of a nearby convent, Catherine gently but surely pulls the various dying people around her into the robust company of the loving and living. Catherine Wheels is a lyrical novel of hope and redemption, the honest story of men and women who have had all the zest for life knocked out of them–damaged souls who are slowly brought back to health by a little girl who knows something the rest of them either never knew or had forgotten: something about prayer, love, and sacrifice.
The book you are holding is the result of an extraordinary exchange of love. It often showed up as hilarious laughter, enormous tomfoolery, good times, practical jokes, furious frustration expressed at outcomes of sporting events, and other events and noises that some people might misinterpret as not being very loving. It was all love: a love for life, a love for winning, a love for other people. Frieda Sellers said so well, “He had an infinite capacity for love.” But it is not just the love that Tommy Hicks gave to so many who crossed his path. He inspired so many to love him, to be inspired by him, to put aside their own petty complaints and do their best in the face of life’s frustrations. “Tommy Hicks gave much of his life to supporting Duke basketball. He was an unapologetic fan, the kind of fan that creates so much of our success. I’m sorry he is no longer with us, but this book will keep his memory alive and be a great source of joy to so many of his friends and family. When I think of the number of times he rolled his wheelchair into an arena hosting the ACC tournament, it inspires me to keep coaching winning teams at Duke.” Mike Krzyzewski, the winningest coach in the history of Division I College basketball “I have read the early drafts and can tell you that this is an Amazin’ book! Buy it and be ready to laugh and cry harder than you may have in a long time!!” Dr. Tim Luckadoo, retired Vice Provost, N.C. State University Any time I try to tell someone what my friendship with Tommy Hicks was about, I get a lump in my throat. With his journalistic style, keen wit, and close observation, Pat Jobe has undertaken a labor of love for us all: to be our words about Tommy, for whom some of us still seek breath to share his name. Collectively, this memoir shares what we all want to express, we knew Tommy. A man who loved us all so well that we each thought that we were unique, and one who taught us by his every example, to live each day to the fullest and without complaint. Thank you, Pat Jobe, for seeking us out and weaving together our individual journeys and stories. Reading your work is a treasure and a roadmap that connects us, each one to the other, and to life with its ever present challenge and promise, and to a universe where there is memory and love and hope that someday we may talk and laugh again with Tommy Hicks, our beloved with whom we were exceptionally graced to call “friend.” I once asked Tommy, “If you could be an animal, what would you be?” Without hesitation, he responded, “A colt!” I close my eyes now and see him leaping free and high across some wide open space. T.A. Price, poet and author of Bent, 31 Poems
