Odes have been very dear to me, from my first one four years ago to "Ode to Ben Jess" just recently. They will remain dear since they are praise in poetic form. Salutes to mortals and nature.

But for me they must end now, and I must begin anew. Much like Forrest Gump when he ran from coast to coast, then just stopped. Odes are precious, but just look at what else I can do. On March 2, 2005 my dear brother Keith died of complications from A.L.S., or Lou Gehrig's disease. I was diagnosed with the same thing on March 7, 2005. It is not for me to question God. His mysterious ways work for an ultimate good end. I promise you that I will push forward until the end, praising God each step of the way! No one can choose how he might die, but he can choose how he lives his last days.

Excerpts

You have a great pleasure waiting for you in this collection of essays, stories and reminiscences. The author has wide-ranging interests from such things as social issues and religion to the solar system and the psychology of the dreaming mind. His ideas will surprise and delight you and you will be intrigued by the unexpected slant he gives to old controversies as he searches for new answers. Humor is never far away. If he does fall into preaching in his discussions of economics and land use it is because he believes that a lack of attention to the forces at work are leading us toward disaster. In another mood which he labels Irish sentiment he tugs at our heart strings with his account of a simple thing like the death of a pet guinea pig. The selections are seldom longer than a few pages but the impact of each is to leave you with a satisfied feeling and the realization that you have something new to think about.

Sunny Isaacs takes us "there", wherever "there" is, with all the wonder of childhood, the infectious grin of exuberant joy and the aching beauty of the desert or mountains. We feel renewed and stronger after a trip with his words.

This book is an introduction of an art ministry filled with the wisdom of Solomon obtained from God as it relates to the expressive art work of Ronald Rodney.

This is a fascinating collection of memories, a journey through a variegated landscape of the author's life and background, starting with her Jewish mother's parents in flight from the pogroms of Czarist Russia and her Irish father's involvement in the War of Independence on the streets of Dublin. A mixed marriage in a theocratic state; and four little girls in the 1930's Margaretta joins the theatre in Ireland as a teenager: and then in London, where she meets English playwright John Arden. They both work at the Royal Court in its early days, and then undertake a fruitful play-writing (and producing) collaboration, over 20 plays for stage and radio. Motherhood proves incompatible with mainstream theatre, until - by becoming a member of the Aosdána - Margaretta finds the financial freedom to explore real-life (i.e. 'Loose') theatre at Greenham Common, and at the United Nations, the biggest playhouse of them all.

Things consists of humor/humanist essays taken from experiences gathered and written while living my fun and exciting, NEVER boring (yeah, right) controversial, deviant (I love that), Gay, and Lesbian lifestyle. Locally, they have been very well received. I can prove this by quoting from the many and numerous (two - possibly three) fan letters that I have received over the 5 years that I have been writing these (200+) columns. Here, allow me -

"My body's off to Kelly Morris! Forget the hat! Her article, "The Boob Seen Around the World" was pure laughter. I cried as I read it was so funny. I need more medicine like this. I will read her from now on."

I am not making this stuff up.

"You don't have to be gay to read Kelly Morris. I am straight and absolutely love the way she tells it like it is."

Fun, huh? Do you get fan mail like that? I have framed both of them. I can show you if you wish to come over some time for tea.

In my column, I have reflected on sooooo many diversified "Things." From tripping over a cobblestone and falling into a crowd at Gay pride (only to be attacked by onlookers who thought I was attacking them) to cursing out my 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit at a Jaguar dealership - from commenting on the problems associated with modern technology ("Cell Phone Psychotic") to fantasizing about a Lesbian superhero named "Danger Dyke" ("Insania") - from being a woman (albeit a Lesbian) trying to pee in the worst, most disgusting men's bathroom on the planet ("Urine Trouble") to being on the Atkin's diet, jonesing for carbohydrates while on a four hour layover at George Bush Intercontinental airport ("Airport TERMINAL"), I have observed and commented, written and rewritten (and rewritten and rewritten ) my life. We won't even go into the chapter entitled "Strange Things" which was spawned from a very demented lobe of my brain ("Shut up! Don't tell them THAT." "Hey, don't tell me what to do...") It's fun, it's true (well, for the most part) and I don't think I have insulted anyone in the process... Someone from Alabama somewhere may get offended, I don't know. Hard to tell really.

Anyway, I have no ulterior motives behind writing this book. I can proudly and honestly say that my sole intention is the pursuit of wealth and fame. I want to vacation in Tahiti - well, a vacation anywhere would be nice. I hope you enjoy this book. Love Kelly (her alter ego.)

Essays tell us what to think about, and how to live. These sensory, lyrical narratives of decision-making show women turning suffering into understanding, grief into poetry and tragedy into renewal. The theme of This Crisis, These Blessings is: Women are who we are- unfinished, ill, well, biologically and culturally diverse, erotic, gorgeous, good, ever changing. We should fly like angels.

This book is helpful in medicine and counselling. Medicine and therapy improve if practitioners read about suffering and use literature in their practices.

Cathy Stonehouse, author of The Words I Know, and the essay "In the Presence of Grace" (Dropped Threads Three) says, "Out of the crisis that is contemporary womanhood, Deirdre Maultsaid's voice sings out sure and clear. Whether drawn from her life as teacher, mother, sexual assault survivor or traveler, Maultsaid's fragments and reflections illuminate through challenging, refuse to excuse themselves, choose instead to bless their reader with wounds. Ready to revolt? Stubborn, lush, combative and irreducible, Maultsaid's lyric rants invite us in to a world where too much is known, and like water, we rise."

Mark Anthony Jarman, author of Salvage King, Ya!, and 19 Knives says, "These essays are disturbing and cumulative and unexpected..."

The Hard-Core Speak, but who is listening? For many years the author has contacted educators, mayors, newspapers and social agencies for help in reducing gang membership in Los Angeles. But no one listened, no one acted, no one cared. Now we have a horrendous crisis on our hands. After reading essays, poems, and autobiographies of the hard core youth, we will be in a better position to create meaningful programs to prevent droves of young people to look for emotional support by joining gangs.

The Hard-Core Speak by Elsa Curyk is the kind of book that can change lives. Elsa Curyk is a fearless teacher deeply dedicated to making a difference in the lives of gang members and other students who have been neglected and beaten down by circumstances beyond their control. Readers will be amazed at the enlightened common sense and strong commitments Elsa brings to the most challenging environments facing our society today. Through her courage and example others can learn how to make a difference—a difference that just might change the lives of young people who now face the world without hope and dreams.

Terry O'Banion

President Emeritus and Senior League Fellow

League for Innovation in the Community College

This book is a collection of both literary and visual art produced by the students at Yerba Buena High School in San Jose, California. After working numerous hours on their own creating their pieces for the book, these students then spent countless hours working one on one with us to perfect their work. For many people this may seem an easy task. However, life is not so easy on San Jose's east side.

When we came up with the idea to create a literary and visual art book, the Consortium of California Subject Matter Project at San Jose State University, the group who funded the project, did not see it as such a unique idea. We had to convince them that this was unique.

First, one needs to understand that while many of our students have caring and supportive families, they still face great challenges in their daily lives. Some students are parents, some have parents who cannot read or help them with schoolwork, some face various forms of violence, some move from place to place looking for stability and security, some help raise their younger siblings and many are full of amazing talent that needs to be shared.

Yerba Buena High School, where these students work to earn their diplomas, is classified as an under-performing school, but we are improving, as the work in this book will show. We are a school where we have common dress to help prevent gang violence, where 46% of our students are eligible for free lunch, where college is more often a dream than a given, where students joint teachers and staff to improve both academically and socially.

Our school is a wonderful place where we are making great strides in improved students' performance. But, it is not like those schools you see on television or in the movies. In all of those schools the kids can read but just don't want to read. Here, over half of our incoming freshmen are reading 3 or more years below grade level. Here we are not just covering curriculum for grades 9-12; we are, at times, having to go back to fourth or fifth grade curricula to re-teach skills that for various reasons are lacking. Here, at Yerba Buena, our students are running up hill and still finding ways to lead the race.

In this book, our students have the opportunity to show just how talented and amazing they are.

Thank you and enjoy,
Meghan Engle and J.A. Epstein

Inspire your friends and family on all occasions with an animal lover's photo-book. Each page features a charming photograph of an animal, paired with an inspirational quote! It is a joy to read and collect, and always a beautiful gift!

Animal shelters are encouraged to contact Kimberly for information regarding discounted bulk orders. Offset your cost to help the many animals that come under your care: klord@telus.net.

Touch a life of an animal today! Visit your nearest animal shelter and find an animal who needs a loving, life long home.

Thank you for caring!

This California Story Project began by asking Huntington Beach college students to tell the story of how they or a family member first came to live in California. The project grew to include story writers from the communities of coastal Orange County. The stories are arranged chronologically, and they tell the tale of a changing state throughout the twentieth century to the present day.

This project is made possible, in part, by a grant from the California Council for the Humanities as part of the Council's statewide California Stories Initiative. The Council is an independent non-profit organization and a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information on the Council and the California Stories Initiative, visit www.californiastories.org.

A collection of essays on heterogeneous topics, amounting to a 'condensate' of a lifetime of thoughts and considerations of the matters discussed. There are a number of original suggestions aimed at the improvement of people's lives.

Peter Landry, lawyer historian, philosopher, a.k.a. blupete, is the creator of a successful website, www.blupete.com.

The Site has been described by a prestigious British site, as Follows:

"Blupete Biographies provides short biographies of notable people in the fields of law, literature, economics, philosophy, history, and political science. The website also provides very general bibliographies cover the aforementioned fields, and several essays by the site's author on various subjects ranging from wildflowers, though Canadian politics, to personal qualities such as leadership. A commentary archived features quotations and reflections on a wide variety of subjects ranging from flowers, taxes, and capital punishment, thought to politics, feminism, civilizations, and happiness. The biographies range form four sentences summaries of people's lives, to more extensive commentaries with explanations of the subject's ideas in the context of their times, important quotations for their works, and notes on their biographies. In many cases the site also provides connections to other web pages offering electronic texts of the works discussed. This website is the personal home page of Peter Landry, a lawyer form Nova Scotia, and its contents reflects his broad interests in the humanities. Philosophers and political theorists in particular tend to be well represented, with good pieces on John Locke and Edmund Burke, for instance. The site is a model of good presentation which many academic web-designers would do well to emulate. Despite its non-academic origins, the site's biographies and summaries should prove to be useful to undergraduates requiring basic reference material, and should provide ideas for further study."
http://www.intute.ac.uk

The biographical sketches herein are representative of the more popular ones at "blupete"