A professional dancer's career, like a professional athlete's, lasts an average of 10 to 15 years. Once the prime years of physical prowess have passed, retirement is inevitable, but dancers still have many years of adult life ahead. The challenge for many is making the transition into a new career. Motivated by her own career transition, author Nancy Upper interviewed former ballet dancers who made successful transitions into new careers after they stopped performing. Part 1 of the book features dancers who remained in ballet-related careers. Part 2 features four individuals who chose careers outside the field of dance. Part 3 focuses on dancers who pursued non-dance careers that help dancers and other performing artists. Appendices include the marketable qualities dancers develop as a result of their training, career transition tips, transition resources, and a graph mapping the transition process.
In 1981, L'Anse Sentinel publisher Ed Danner unleashed the madness when he invited a rookie reporter from Chicago's South Side to work for his Upper Michigan weekly newspaper. Nancy Besonen's Off The Hook is a collection of humor columns she successfully slipped by her editor over a 30-year reporting career. However, there were still a few very silly things left unsaid. Her second and final installment, Off the Hook Too!, keeps the laughter alive and rounds out what she likes to call "The Compleat Works of Nancy Besonen." (take that, William Shakespeare!) "Nancy Besonen's weekly columns in the L'Anse Sentinel always made me smile, or chuckle and, quite often, even snort with mirth. Besonen connects so well with our quirky Yooper culture and its priorities. Her perspective of our everyday lives is hilarious and reminiscent of the late Erma Bombeck." -- Terri Martin, author and U.P. Notable Book Award recipient "It takes a special person to write a weekly column year after year and decade after decade. There have to be times when life is not funny, you're just not in the mood to be humorous, or you simply can't think of a damn thing to satirize, or poke fun at. So, hats off to Nancy Besonen because judging by this collection of her weekly columns in the L'Anse Sentinel she has a genuine talent for finding humor in everyday life." --Tom Powers, Michigan in Books "Besonen has written a book that reads like standup comedy, à la 'up-north' humor. If you have only heard of Northern Michigan or are an actual resident (Yooper) you will find the clever writing in this book to be enjoyable. Short chapters make reading easy on the days there isn't much time to read. The entire book does not have to be finished to find out whodunnit, although it's still difficult to put down." -Carolyn Wilhelm, Midwest Book Review "Besonen, a gifted journalist who moved north from Chicago for the fishing and brought with her a deep sensibility for the U.P, both teaches and inspires. This is true nonfiction at its best, both wit and investigative journalism. I am glad she collects it here." -- Mack Hassler, former professor of English, Kent State University for U.P. Book Review ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Excerpts ~ ~ ~ ~ Hunting—There is no arguing that antlers are important. They help deer decide who gets a date. They help successful hunters get a grip while dragging their prize from the woods. They are the ultimate Northwoods accent piece, suitable for hanging in any room but mostly those frequented by Northwoods men. Photography—There is something horribly wrong with a society that requires its young to become certified in Hunter Safety before handling a gun, yet will put a fully loaded camera into a child’s hands at a wedding and say, “Get a shot of Daddy doing the Chicken Dance!” Berry picking—If someone asks if we’ve been picking blueberries, we say yes, because it’s hard to lie when you have leaves in your hair and blue spots on your butt. When they ask where, we say “The Plains.” Then we say “Goodbye.” We’re there to pick. It’s the way of the sticks. Toys—My particular generation is the baby boomers. We were born as a direct result of WWII. Our daddies were very happy to come home to our mommies. They expressed their joy by populating the earth with many children who were easily entertained. Cell phones--“Don’t those damn things ever stop ringin’?” my husband bellowed. Our son, seated beside him in the car, bent his head in obvious shame, focusing on the offending cell phone in his hand. A moment later his sister’s cell phone rang in the back seat. It was her brother, calling her from the front. Bugs—I opened the cap on my shampoo, and knew just how Janet Leigh felt when Norman Bates joined her for a shower in Psycho. There was an earwig underneath it, and it wasn’t finished bathing. We are used to being bugged and having nowhere to hide. If Norman had made his move on a Maki in the sauna, she’d have parted his hair with a pickaxe. Food—There is a time and a place for eating healthier. I have no idea when or where that is, but I am pretty sure it’s not Thanksgiving Day, when every dish is meant to shine, mainly from its high fat content. We are thankful for giblet gravy and real butter. Barbie—In the beginning, she was blonde or brunette. Then she became black or Hispanic, which was a good thing. Then you cut her hair, which was a bad thing because it devalued your investment and caused Ken to lose interest, though nobody thought Ken was much of a catch, anyway. Data breach—What makes a data breach even more frightening is that 400 of our personal, private characteristics may also be fully exposed. The computing element may, at this very moment, be tuning into the facts that you are a smoker and a dog owner. What are they going to do? Sniff you out and steal your dog? Crafting—It was a controlled burn, but just barely. The wood burner warmed up faster than the artist, from “cool” to “incinerate” before I could warm my coffee. When the smoke finally cleared, I keenly perceived with my artist’s eye that I had succeeded in creating charcoal. And it wasn’t even good-looking charcoal. Bathrooms—Ever since the outhouse found its way in, man has struggled to delicately define his waste space. The new spa-like bathroom isn’t a place where you just go. Well, it kind of is, but you also go there to relax, unwind and pamper yourself while family members try to beat the door down because they need to take care of business. Grandparenting—My mom never played canasta, but she didn’t roll around on the floor with our kids, either, because old grandmothers had something NEW grandmothers lack: their dignity. My mom raised her eyebrows, said stuff like “Oh dear,” and kicked naked Barbies under the couch to be with their clothes. Naked Kens, too, different couch. Guilt—Not to brag (sin of pride), but we Catholics have kind of cornered the market on guilt. Catholics can confess our sins to a priest and receive penance--prayer, more or less of it, depends on the week--to wipe our slates clean. Then we walk out of the confessional, speculate on why the next guy is going in, and bam! We’re back in the red again.
No bird is common, if we use “common” to mean ordinary. But birds that are seen more commonly than others can seem less noteworthy than species that are rarely glimpsed. In this gathering of essays and illustrations celebrating fifty of the most common birds of the Upper Midwest, illustrator Dana Gardner and writer Nancy Overcott encourage us to take a closer look at these familiar birds with renewed appreciation for their not-so-ordinary beauty and lifeways.Beginning with the garishly colored male and the more gently colored female wood duck, whose tree cavity nest serves as a launching pad for ducklings in the summer months, and ending on a bright yellow note with the American goldfinch, whose cheerful presence enlivens the midwestern landscape all year long, Overcott combines field observations drawn from her twenty-plus years of living and birding in Minnesota's Big Woods with anecdotes and data from other ornithologists to portray each species' life cycle, its vocalizations and appearance, and its habitat, food, and foraging methods as well as migration patterns and distribution. Infused with a dedication to conserving natural resources, her succinct yet personable prose forms an ideal complement to Gardner's watercolors as this renowned illustrator of avian life worldwide revisits the birds of his childhood. Together art and text ensure that the wild turkey, great blue heron, sharp-shinned hawk, barred owl, pileated woodpecker, house wren, ovenbird, field sparrow, rose-breasted grosbeak, red-winged blackbird, and forty other species of the Upper Midwest are never seen as common again.
Off The Top Onion Heads is a book of poems dedicated to all my friends especially Eunice and my children Rachael, Michele, Alvin Jr., and Judi Lynne that have been very inspirational to me through the years, the tears, joy, laughter, and pain. My cousin Phyllis gets a lot of credit for me writing this book because she used to eat onion sandwiches everyday and blow everybody away. I mean we would be running to get away from the kitchen, the house, anywhere she came with onion breath.
When the magic wind switches Katie into her mother just before a tap dancing audition, Katie panics, ruining her mother's big chance to appear on television.
A useful review tool in preparing for the NCLEX-RN examination, this guide is based on the latest NCLEX-RN test plan - including alternate item formats. More than 2,000 practice questions are included in the book/CD-ROM package, along with test-taking strategies, rationales and top 10 challenge questions to test your knowledge in each subject area.
The Exploring Piano Classics: A Masterworks Method for Developing Pianists series pairs motivating performance repertoire with thoughtful technical studies. Each level contains a Repertoire book and a Technique book, both with convenient page-by-page correlation. When used together, the books give students a deep understanding of the art of music, performance practices, and the necessary skills to play the piano with technical ease. The Technique books are designed to give students a highly structured program of technical development. They include basic keyboard patterns (five-finger patterns, scales, cadences, and arpeggios in the major and minor keys of the Repertoire books), exercises and etudes, and other necessary technical drills for mastering each piece in the Repertoire books. Suggestions for efficient practice are also included. Internationally known clinician and teacher Nancy Bachus is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music with an M.M. in Piano Performance and Literature. She has performed solo recitals across the U. S., Canada, and Italy, and appeared in the original "Monster Concerts" in venues such as Lincoln Center and the White House. Nancy owns an independent teaching studio in Ohio.
Entertainment Weekly" has called this R&B-flavored fab foursome "the most elegant of the boy bands". Their first single reached #12 on the Billboard charts and Motown Records is giving them the high profile treatment. This biography also features eight pages of color photos.
The story of how a woman from Minneapolis paddled the Mississippi to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. Scheibe and her paddling partner, Heather Jeske, began the 575-mile trip at the headwaters in Itasca State Park (Minn.) and ended in Red Wing, Minnesota, visiting with gatherings of women along the route. Her story celebrates the wisdom that women gain through facing everyday challenges.
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