Today's parents feel pressured to spend "quality time" preparing their child for success in school and life. This landmark book shows parents how and why everyday moments they share with their child, for instance preparing and eating dinner, giving the child a bath, and changing a child's diaper, are the most valuable educational activities of all.
This book explores the aesthetics of the objects and environments we encounter in daily life. Thomas Leddy stresses the close relationship between everyday aesthetics and the aesthetics of art, but places special emphasis on neglected aesthetic terms such as ‘neat,’ ‘messy,’ ‘pretty,’ ‘lovely,’ ‘cute,’ and ‘pleasant.’ The author advances a general theory of aesthetic experience that can account for our appreciation of art, nature, and the everyday.
How do you feel about decisions you make? Do you know how to manage anxiety? Are you getting the results you want in life? You have everything you need within your grasp to change and achieve whatever you set your mind to. The verses in this book present the power of God’s word to unleash surprising and exciting results in your life. Use them as a guide to Make the Ordinary Extraordinary.
• Details how the author and her boyfriend developed a close friendship with Manly Hall and how Hall at first mistook her boyfriend as his heir apparent • Explains how Hall adopted the author as his “girl Friday” and personal weirdo screener, giving her access to the inner circles of occult Los Angeles • Richly depicts the characters who worked and gathered at Hall’s Philosophical Research Society, including Hall’s wife, the famed “Mad Marie” In the early 1980s, underground musicians Tamra Lucid and her boyfriend Ronnie Pontiac discovered the book The Secret Teachings of All Ages at the Bodhi Tree bookstore in Los Angeles. Poring over the tome, they were awakened to the esoteric and occult teachings of the world. Tamra and Ronnie were delighted to discover that the book’s author, Manly Palmer Hall (1901-1990), master teacher of Hermetic mysteries and collector of all things mystical, lived in LA and gave lectures every Sunday at his mystery school, the Philosophical Research Society (PRS). After their first tantalizing Sunday lecture, Tamra and Ronnie soon started volunteering at the PRS, beginning a seven-year friendship with Manly P. Hall, who eventually officiated their wedding in his backyard. In this touching, hilarious, and ultimately tragic autobiographical account, Tamra shares an intimate portrait of Hall and the occult world of New Age Los Angeles, including encounters with astrologers, scholars, artists, spiritual seekers, and celebrities such as Jean Houston and Marianne Williamson. Tamra vividly describes how she used her time at the PRS to learn everything she could not only about metaphysics but also about the people who practice it. But when Tamra begs Hall to banish a certain man from the PRS--the same man who inherited Hall’s estate and whom his wife Marie later alleged was Hall’s murderer--Tamra and Ronnie are the ones banished. Tamra’s noir chronicle of an improbable friendship between a twenty-something punk and an eighty-year-old metaphysical scholar reveals Hall not only as an inspiring esoteric thinker but also as a genuinely kind human being who simply wanted to share his quest for inner meaning and rare wisdom with the world.
"Did I sound stupid?" "Should I have sent that email?" "How do I look?" Many of us spend a lot of time feeling self-conscious and comparing ourselves to others. Why do we judge ourselves so relentlessly? Why do we strive so hard to be special or successful, or to avoid feeling rejected? When psychologist and mindfulness expert Dr. Ronald Siegel realized that he, as well as most of his clients, was caught in a cycle of endless self-evaluation, he decided to do something about it. This engaging, empowering guide sheds light on this very human habit--and explains how to break it. Through illuminating stories and exercises, practical tools (which you can download and print for repeated use), and guided meditations with accompanying audio downloads, Dr. Siegel invites you to stop obsessing so much about how you measure up. Instead, by accepting the extraordinary gift of being ordinary, you can build stronger connections with others and get more joy out of life.
While her sisters were blessed at birth with exceptional skills, Princess Basil's "gift" is to be ordinary. But can a princess be ordinary? After escaping an unconventional kidnapping, Princess Basil finds herself far from her castle and must take fate into her own hands. She tracks down the fairy godmother who "blessed" her, and learns the solution to her ordinariness might be as simple as finding a magic ring. With an unlikely ally in tow, she takes on gnomes, a badger, and a couple of snarky foxes in her quest for a less ordinary life. Portland comics artist Cassie Anderson (Lifeformed) takes her webcomic to print in this tale of magical adventure, full of soul and humor for readers of all ages.
"In Everyday Life Joseph A. Amato offers a panoramic account of the evolution of our daily existence and reflects on the complex and changing textures of everyday life. Beginning with societies of scarcity and relative lack of change and ending with our own twenty-first-century lives, he ranges widely through topics as varied as dirt and muck, walking and the charm of spices, and through time from early agriculture to mechanization and the modern urban existence. Amato argues that what seems to be ordinary is in fact extraordinary, and shows how life, even in the very recent past, differed from life in our present-day societies of abundance and of remorseless change. The result is a challenging and thought-provoking introduction to change and continuity in daily life"--Publisher's description.
This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl--and a young woman--trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world, of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community that made all the difference. Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping to oversee the collapse of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to working to protect the country in the aftermath of 9-11, to becoming only the second woman--and the first black woman ever--to serve as Secretary of State. But until she was 25 she never learned to swim, because when she was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor decided he'd rather shut down the city's pools than give black citizens access. Throughout the 1950's, Birmingham's black middle class largely succeeded in insulating their children from the most corrosive effects of racism, providing multiple support systems to ensure the next generation would live better than the last. But by 1963, Birmingham had become an environment where blacks were expected to keep their head down and do what they were told--or face violent consequences. That spring two bombs exploded in Rice’s neighborhood amid a series of chilling Klu Klux Klan attacks. Months later, four young girls lost their lives in a particularly vicious bombing. So how was Rice able to achieve what she ultimately did? Her father, John, a minister and educator, instilled a love of sports and politics. Her mother, a teacher, developed Condoleezza’s passion for piano and exposed her to the fine arts. From both, Rice learned the value of faith in the face of hardship and the importance of giving back to the community. Her parents’ fierce unwillingness to set limits propelled her to the venerable halls of Stanford University, where she quickly rose through the ranks to become the university’s second-in-command. An expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs, she played a leading role in U.S. policy as the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Less than a decade later, at the apex of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, she received the exciting news--just shortly before her father’s death--that she would go on to the White House as the first female National Security Advisor. As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother’s cancer battle and the heady challenge of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds nothing back in this remarkably candid telling.
Krutch’s trenchant observations about life prospering in the hostile environment of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert turn to weighty questions about humanity and the precariousness of our existence, putting lie to Western denials of mind in the “lower” forms of life: “Let us not say that this animal or even this plant has ‘become adapted’ to desert conditions. Let us say rather that they have all shown courage and ingenuity in making the best of the world as they found it. And let us remember that if to use such terms in connection with them is a fallacy then it can only be somewhat less a fallacy to use the same terms in connection with ourselves.”
