When we go to a baseball stadium and cheer a person like Babe Ruth for hitting the ball harder, higher, further and more often than the other players, we are cheering him as our representative. We cheer people of exceptional accomplishment whose achievements are so highly visible and so obviously measurable because we, too, are faced with the complexity of the lives that we live and are challenged to perform feats of heroic proportions just to be able to say that we have lived our lives well when we come to the end. In the novel, Babe Ruth says, "There ain't nothin' like a game of baseball. There ain't nothin' like a beautiful summer day, with the clouds light and fluffy and the sun on the back of your shoulders and a nice liftin' breeze comin' down onto the field from out of the stands." The man who feels this way about the game he loves is a man who faces enormous challenges, digs deep down inside himself and finds whatever is needed in order to triumph in the game of life. This makes him a fitting representative for us all; we all hit spectacular home runs in out own quiet ways.
This novel, presents the Wright Brothers as idealists who build a dream out of the nuts and bolts of their everyday reality. There is a hard core of steel in the Wrights that, however compassionate, polite, accommodating and modest they appear to be to other people, is the straight arrow that allows them to see their life's work clearly, to make every decision and action move towards the achievement of their goal, and to seldom make false judgments or false gestures that would cause them to deviate from their true course. The assurance that guides the brothers is that quality in creative people that allows them to work towards their lifes goal no matter who or what encourages or discourages them, advances them or retards them, promotes them or disparages them. Familiarity with the Wright Brothers story has made the invention of the worlds first airplane seem to have a fairy-tale ambiance which is divorced from the sweat and anxiety of everyday life. This assumption of an effortless invention process is actually a hold-over from the initial response to their accomplishment by the people of the Wright Brothers own time. While suitably impressed with the achievement of the Wright Brothers, the people of the early Century remained unaware of the complex process that the Wright Brothers had actually gone through in order to produce such amazing results. The lack of appreciation of the complexity of the invention process is a result of the pronouncements of "aviation experts" of the time who failed to appreciate the magnitude of the Wright accomplishment for two reasons: an inability to imagine the number and complexity of the challenges that the Wrights had found solutions to, and a desire to limit the Wrights legal hold over their inventions in light of what promised to be a great financial future for the new innovation. In effect, while the public of the early Century marveled at the invention of the airplane, and gave full credit to the Wright Brothers, many "aviation experts"assumed that the Wright Brothers contribution to the invention process had involved nothing more complicated than a little tinkering with the ideas of those who were better qualified by education and by academic eminence to invent the airplane.
On March 19, 1937, world-renowned Soviet film-maker, Sergei Eisenstein, appears before the All-Union Creative Conference of Workers in Soviet Cinematography, accused of having failed to create films which reflect the social and political orthodoxy of the Stalinist regime. Reeling from an unrelenting barrage of questions, accusations and threats, the film-maker struggles to respond to the dilemma which is faced by all artists in totalitarian states: how to reconcile ones freedom of imagination and creativity with the conformity to the artistically-stifling orthodoxy which is demanded by the rulers of society? His response is an example of the ingenuity which is often displayed by artists in repressive societies.
What is the myth of the Wright brothers? Is it the fairy tale of 1903, when two human beings ignored their differences and created an invention that split human history into two eras: before and after the possibility of flight? Or is it the grim post-1903 reality, when each brother struggled alone, an ocean between them, to promote their new invention in the face of hostility, indifference, ridicule and disbelief? Or - are both harmony and disharmony - chaos and control - the dark and light threads in the fabric of every human dream? The Wright Brothers: Flight is Possible together with the accompanying journal and notebook represent the twenty-first installment in author John Passfield's project of exploring the concept of form and meaning in the contemporary novel. More information can be found at www.johnpassfield.ca.
Raskolnikov: Murder with an Axe a novel This novel is an imaginative re-creation of Dostoyevskys Crime and Punishment. After killing the old pawnbroker, Ilyona Ivanovna, and her sister, Lizabeta, the young student, Raskolnikov, is haunted by the savagery of the double-murder. As he tosses and turns in his misery reviewing his situation, his motives and his view of himself as an "Extraordinary Man" Raskolnikovs preconscious mind forms the image-patterns by which he seeks to understand what he has done. The Making of Murder with an Axe a reflective journal This journal records my reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form. Planning Murder with an Axe a planning notebook During the writing of the novel, I kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook now in print form reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form. The Project Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the tenth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which I am exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download at www.johnpassfield.ca.
Water Lane, the last stop on Medieval pilgrimages to Canterbury, is located in the ancestral village that John Passfield shares with the, Elizabethan playwright, Christopher Marlowe. In this novel, the water in the lane becomes a central image in an imaginary pilgrimage that the dying artist recalls as he lies bleeding from a stab wound on the floor of Eleanor Bulls house in Deptford, in May of 1593. Amid the footsteps and murmurs of his murderers, as they rehearse their version of the scuffle, Marlowes preconscious mind attempts a final structuring of the images of his life. The overt mystery -- who has arranged the death of Christopher Marlowe? --frames the covert mystery: what are the influences that shape, an artists work?
In June 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, two part-time railway workers, 23-year-old Cyril Passfield and his friend, Charlie Thompson, decide to leave their hometown of St. Thomas, Ontario. They go "on the hobo," joining the great army of the unemployed who are riding the trains back and forth across Canada. As they travel west, they hope to get work in the harvest or hop a freighter in Vancouver and see the world. This novel is based on Cyril Passfield's diary from the summer of 1932. Cyril Passfield: Out West, together with the accompanying journal and notebook, represent the twenty-first installment in author John Passfield's project of exploring the concept of form and meaning in the contemporary novel. More information can be found at www.johnpassfield.ca.
Author's PrefacePompeii: Vesuvius Dominus – a novel On the afternoon of AD 79, a white cloud appears above Mount Vesuvius and begins to deposit a layer of ash on the nearby town of Pompeii. Gradually, the people of Pompeii become aware that an awesomely destructive natural force has unleashed its full fury against the lives that they have established in their community. As they are swept up in the destructive experience, three people – Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder and Julia – consider the premises by which they have been living their lives. The Making of Vesuvius Dominus – a reflective journal This journal records my reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.Planning Vesuvius Dominus – a planning notebook During the writing of the novel, I kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook – now in print form – reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.The Project Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the fifteenth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which I am exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download at www.johnpassfield.ca.
This journal, a companion book to the novel, Inside the Wright Brothers: Flight is Possible, is a record of the thoughts that occur to a writer while in the process of writing a novel. In recording these thoughts, the journal provides an exploration of a number of topics: the working out of a pattern, in novel form, to reflect the author's conception of the meaning of the Wright Brothers' experience; a consideration of the achievement of the Wright Brothers as an example of the creative process at work; and a step-by-step record of the writing process, which includes the planning, writing, editing and polishing of a novel about the Wright Brothers. In addition, the journal presents the challenge of matching form and meaning in the novel genre as a response to the complexities of life, and a discussion of the possibilities of the novel as an art form. This journal is the seventh in a series of companion books pairing novel and journal which explore the concept of form and meaning in the novel.
The poet, performer and author Pauline Johnson was born on the Six Nations Reserve in near Brantford, Ontario in 1861. Her life and work were tied up with questions of identity. Her Mohawk stage name, Tekahionwake, means "double life." Was Johnson American, British, or Canadian? Was she Mohawk, English, or "Mixed"? In the end, Johnson added up her assets and liabilities and decided that the Pauline the world would see would be "Pauline the Performance Artist"-"Pauline on Stage." As for the real Pauline, she would keep that to herself. Pauline Johnson: Know Who I Am is the latest installment in Canadian writer John Passfield's exploration of the concept of form and meaning in the modern novel. It is accompanied by a reflective journal and planning notebook, both available on the author's website. Other novels by Passfield include Terry Fox: Somewhere the Hurting Must Stop and John Passfield: Saturday Morning.
The operating environment is always moving to higher levels of complexity. The answer to complexity is--simplicity. Many companies fail to improve because they are in conflict with the operating environment. Their leaders have long discontinued any program or process of self- development, and they become what is termed "past-based." This puts their organization, within the past-based paradigms of their leaders, in conflict with the operating environment. In short, the organization becomes stagnant and enters a phase of decline. Is there a formula that management can use to move the organization to a higher level? Definitely there is and through this book it will be shared with you. The author's underlying principle has always been that, leaders have the duty, above all, to learn from others. He discovered the importance of this while coaching college-level football. A coach, after all, is a student of the game and successful coaches must either continue learning, growing, and achieving, or abdicate their mission as coaches. A LEADER, LIKE A COACH, MUST "BE" SOMEONE TO HIS PEOPLE RATHER THAN "DO" FOR THEM. No matter how bad the game gets, the coach cannot step onto the field and play the game for his players; he must remain on the sideline. Coaches must be skilled at posting results; their expertise must extend to three areas: They must know what they want to achieve. They must be able to communicate clearly what they want to achieve. They must be able to turn what they want to achieve into reality. He believes that it is through people that performance of any kind, good or bad is posted. Coaches seek out the "blue chip" athletes and develop them. Therefore, he asks, should an organization do any less? Read what some leaders had to say: "The Formula will help you define the competitive position of the leadership in your organization and help you find the answer to a critical question--are your leaders past-based or future-based." - Gary Sasser, President/CEO, Averitt Express "Whether in sports or business good competition brings out the best in people. This book presents a great game plan for either, as well as life in general." - Wayne Spain, COO, Averitt Express "The title of this book has been carefully chosen by the author. If any of us think that moving an LTL Carrier to elite performance does not include the elements of The Formula then we are badly mistaken. Ward Trucking Corp 103.5 Operating Ratio in 1989; 92.0 Operating Ratio in 2002, The Formula works!" - Dave Ward, President, Ward Trucking Corporation "If you want to improve the performance of your company, this is the book. The Formula saved us." - Dennis Britt, President, Service Transport, Inc.
Freedom's Fire Fighters is a business parable. The reader should discover the underlying messages in this fiction drama about missions, goals, planning, teamwork, communication, commitment, defect prevention, and culture. The author challenges each reader to identify the character in the imaginary company that they are currently playing in the real world, and relate the events in the story to events in their own lives. At the speed of thought the author places the reader inside an imaginary company named Freedom in an imaginary world ruled by an artificial intelligence brain and robots. The artificial intelligence brain is programmed to assure that no humans can ever be in any position of power. This electronic dictator places no value on life. More than ninety nine percent of all people hate it. Freedom manufactures parts for the government and provides high-risk entertainment events for the citizens. Freedom is plagued with fires that threaten its survival. A consultant claims that its fire fighters are out of control. Some top executives accuse Freedom's president of sending mixed signals. An internal war erupts.
A one-legged boy, Terry Fox, sets himself the task of running a marathon a day across the length of Canada, the second-largest country in the world, in aid of cancer research, because the children are crying with pain in the cancer wards and somewhere the hurting must stop. Together this novel and the accompanying journal and notebook comprise the nineteenth installment in an ongoing novel-writing project in which the author is exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st century. All of the accompanying journals and notebooks, as well as more information on the project itself, are available on the author's website, www.johnpassfield.ca. The Making of Somewhere the Hurting Must Stop This journal records the author's reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art form. Planning Somewhere the Hurting Must Stop During the writing of the novel the author kept a handwritten notebook which records the day-to-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook, now in print form, reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel form.
The Welfare Revolution of the early 20th century did not start with Clement Attlee's Labour governments of 1945 to 1951 but had its origins in the Liberal government of forty years earlier. The British Welfare Revolution, 1906-14 offers a fresh perspective on the social reforms introduced by these Liberal governments in the years 1906 to 1914. Reforms conceived during this time created the foundations of the Welfare State and transformed modern Britain; they touched every major area of social policy, from school meals to pensions, the minimum wage to the health service. Cooper uses an innovative approach, the concept of the Counter-Elite, to explain the emergence of the New Liberalism and examines the research that was carried out to devise ways to meet each specific social problem facing Britain in the early 20th century. For example, a group of businessmen, including Booth and Rowntree, invented the poverty survey to pinpoint those living below the poverty line and encouraged a new generation of sociologists. This comprehensive single volume survey presents a new critical angle on the origins of the British welfare state and is an original analysis of the reforms and the leading personalities of the Liberal governments from the late Edwardian period to the advent of the First World War.
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