Joe McDonald retired in June, 2003, after 40 years with 3M Company. This book describes various experiences occurring since retirement, and comments on the vagaries of the retired life. This results in a mosaic picturing a happy man's autumn years, years centered upon family and friends.
Reviews the beliefs, customs, and rituals associated with Christian funerals; discusses the growing acceptance of cremation and memorial services; and explains how to plan a spiritually meaningful funeral service.
A rich and surprising look at the robust European culture that thrived after the collapse of Rome. The barbarians who destroyed the glory that was Rome demolished civilization along with it, and for the next four centuries the peasants and artisans of Europe barely held on. Random violence, mass migration, disease, and starvation were the only ways of life. This is the picture of the Dark Ages that most historians promote. But archaeology tells a different story. Peter Wells, one of the world’s leading archaeologists, surveys the archaeological record to demonstrate that the Dark Ages were not dark at all. The kingdoms of Christendom that emerged starting in the ninth century sprang from a robust, previously little-known European culture, albeit one that left behind few written texts.
“The title character’s wry, sad, and insightful inner voice is the star here. Her meditations on grief, death, love, and duty are full of poetry and longing. Perfect for literary-fiction fans, especially those who enjoyed other extraordinary novels about ordinary people.” —Library Journal, starred review Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman’s midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China, for fans of Yiyun Li and Julie Otsuka. The Funeral Cryer long ago accepted the mundane realities of her life: avoided by fellow villagers because of the stigma attached to her job and underappreciated by her husband, whose fecklessness has pushed the couple close to the brink of breakup. But just when things couldn't be bleaker, she takes a leap of faith—and in so doing, things start to take a surprising turn for the better. Dark, moving and wry, The Funeral Cryer is both an illuminating depiction of a “left behind” society—and proof that it's never too late to change your life.
This Book is based on real life stories, almost all the protagonists in the articles that i have penned till date are every day common people, people whom we meet in our day to day life. These everyday common people have much much more to share, for they are the once who face all kind of hardships in their lives and survive, for people like me to tell their tales. All the tales in this book are real life stories that i’ve experienced. Each story gives you some moral, some thought to ponder over.
Bringing alive the dramatic poems of Old Norse heroic legend, this new collection offers accessible, ground-breaking and inspiring essays which introduce and analyse the exciting legends of the two doomed Helgis and their valkyrie lovers; the dragon-slayer Sigurðr; Brynhildr the implacable shield-maiden; tragic Guðrún and her children; Attila the Hun (from a Norse perspective!); and greedy King Fróði, whose name lives on in Tolkien’s Frodo. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to the poems for students, taking a number of fresh, theoretically-sophisticated and productive approaches to the poetry and its characters. Contributors bring to bear insights generated by comparative study, speech act and feminist theory, queer theory and psychoanalytic theory (among others) to raise new, probing questions about the heroic poetry and its reception. Each essay is accompanied by up-to-date lists of further reading and a contextualisation of the poems or texts discussed in critical history. Drawing on the latest international studies of the poems in their manuscript context, and written by experts in their individual fields, engaging with the texts in their original language and context, but presented with full translations, this companion volume to The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Mythology (Routledge, 2002) is accessible to students and illuminating for experts. Essays also examine the afterlife of the heroic poems in Norse legendary saga, late medieval Icelandic poetry, the nineteenth-century operas of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, and the recently published (posthumous) poem by Tolkien, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.
Since the publication of the bestselling Sounding the Seasons, Malcolm Guite has repeatedly been asked for more sonnets. This new collection offers a sequence of 50 sonnets that focus on many passages in the Gospels: the Beatitudes, parables and miracles, teachings on the Kingdom, and the ‘hard sayings’ - Jesus’ challenging demands with which we wrestle. In addition this collection includes: •A sequence of seven sonnets on 'The Wilderness', exploring mysterious stories of divine encounter such as Jacob’s wrestling with the angel. •Poetic reflections on music, hospitality and ecology. •Seven short poems celebrating the days of creation. •A biblical index pairing the poems with scripture readings for use in worship.