For each of us, there is a point in time when the course of our actions taken will change or firmly seal the direction of our life. For fifty-five-year-old Allyson Gregory, her defining moment was when she was eighteen and a college freshman. Because of a brief fool-hearted relationship, she had become pregnant. When the boyfriend quickly fled town, her twin sister, Jackie, and their roommate, Bets, rallied around a frightened, brokenhearted Allyson to help her face that nightmare together. Every year, on August 8, Allyson relives the memory of the birth of her baby boy and then the painful time that followed when she gave him up for adoption. Because of her Christian upbringing, abortion was never an option. Adoption was the only avenue for the young Allyson. As the years passed, Allyson graduated college, met and married Kyle Gregory, and they had a daughter, Shelley Ann. Starting and building a pottery business with her sister, Jackie, gave her life enrichment with her family. Throughout all the events of those busy years, deep in the recesses of her heart and mind lingered the shadow of her baby boy. What has his life been like? Was he loved and cared for? Did he hate her for giving him up? She could not rest her thoughts on the all-important question: Was he all right? Often it is in the midst of difficulty that we find our greatest opportunities to experience God's love. We know that our trials are a part of our spiritual journey and that our Lord will mature us through the suffering as we submit to His will. I wanted to write a story about just such a woman, Allyson Gregory, facing and dealing with devastating loss. In Allyson's Journey, Backward, we meet the baby boy, Matthew Williamson, now a grown man and suffering from leukemia. Because of the urgency of this life-or-death situation, he is able to obtain his adoption papers to find his birth parents' information. He is humbled that she is anxious to help him through the bone marrow transplant process. Allyson gave him life once, and now she wants to help restore that life to good health. As the various characters weave themselves throughout the story, Allyson and Matthew rebuild their own lives with a renewed strength and pride. I hope you will be interested in reading the fictional story, Allyson's Journey, Backward, as I believe that the issue of teen pregnancy, abortion, and adoption is relevant to today's circumstances. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.
In 1960, Katrina Morgan was at a personal crossroad in her life. She needed a reason to go forward, a project to give her purpose. She has bought a run-down brownstone apartment building on Walker Avenue in New York. The deteriorated structure is the way Katrina feels about her own life. Something she had not counted on was while the rebuilding, inside and out, was taking place, she grew to know and admire the twenty souls who have occupied the brownstone for many years. Some of the tenants are excited and willing to be a part of this renewal effort while a few are very skeptical, especially one older man. Katrina and her sister are trying to mend their own broken lives following the death of their parents and two brothers in an automobile accident. The tenants' lives and Kat's personal life began to intertwine as a strong awareness and respect starts to take shape. The surrounding brownstones lining Walker Avenue are occupied with people fearing the abrupt change. Envy and anger fills their conscious emotions. They are simply afraid. Ms. Kat's Brownstone is a story of strength, kindness, and hope.
Leaning against the white pillar of the office building, she sees the woman standing near the far end of the long porch. Lydia has seen her before, and these frequent sightings are becoming a concern to her. The woman never approaches, just stares. During Lydia's twenty-six years of life, there has been doubt and puzzlement that has filtered in her private life for as long as she can remember. Her parents always seemed to have guarded looks, then would quickly look away. What was wrong? And now there seems to be a woman following her. Questions that pop into Lydia's head never get a solid answer. As a child, Lydia had happenings within the structure of her parents' lives. She just tried to accept them as they were and not cause trouble. She knew that she could always trust her dad but never had that same secure feeling about her mother. A child accepts family problems as just being the normal for them. Up until recently, Lydia has tried not to dwell on the strange feelings or questions within her mind, about the tension, just hoping it does not involve her. But a hint of uncomfortable doubt or uneasiness lingers. In America, we are made up of mixtures of diversities of culture and ways of life. Breeding and background rarely rears its ugly head as we become adults. Finding our own roots and knowing from whom we are descended is often just a passing interest. Such knowledge can be enlightening at times or can be a little fearful. Lydia comes face-to-face with a prejudice attitude, forcing her to see the damage that can be inflicted on another human being. Will she have to dig deep into her own beginnings for her own peace of mind?
Animals live in different places - in arctic ice and tropical rain, on desert sand, in dark caves too, on mountains high, in oceans blue. Animals play, eat, sleep, and roam within their habitat - they call it home!" (publisher).
Lace up your boots and sample sixty-one of the finest trails Yosemite National Park has to offer. Fully updated and revised, and including color maps and photos throughout, Hiking Yosemite National Park features everything from short strolls and day hikes to multiday backcountry treks, every one of which will treat you to some of the world’s most stunning scenery and allow you to get the most out of this remarkably diverse natural wonderland. Features: Hikes suited to every ability Directions to the trailheads Trail Finder for best hikes for lakes, waterfalls, views, wildlife, and wildflowers Difficulty ratings and average hike times Trip-planning information, including permits, local lodging and campgrounds, and best hiking seasons for every featured hike.
Both a memoir in travel essays and an anti-guidebook, Bad Tourist takes us across four continents to fifteen countries, showing us what not to do when traveling. A woman learning to claim her own desires and adventures, Suzanne Roberts encounters lightning and landslides, sharks and piranha-infested waters, a nightclub drugging, burning bodies, and brief affairs as she searches for the love of her life and finally herself. Throughout her travels Roberts tries hard not to be a bad tourist, but owing to her cultural blind spots, things don’t always go as planned. Fearlessly confessional, shamelessly funny, and wholly unapologetic, Roberts offers a refreshingly honest account of the joys and absurdities of confronting new landscapes and cultures, as well as new versions of herself. Raw, bawdy, and self-effacing, Bad Tourist is a journey packed with delights and surprises—both of the greater world and of the mysterious workings of the heart.
Hiking Waterfalls in Yosemite National Park includes detailed hike descriptions, maps, and color photos for approximately 100 of the most scenic waterfall hikes in the park. Hike descriptions also include history, local trivia, and GPS coordinates. Hiking Waterfalls in Yosemite National Park will take you to the best areas to view the most spectacular waterfalls.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The definitive biography of a vulnerable and talented actress, now with explosive new chapters and insider details of her tragic death, the cover-ups, and the reopened investigation. An ID Book Club Selection • “Impressive, disturbing, and revelatory.”—Variety Natalie Wood has been hailed alongside Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor as one of the top three female movie stars in film history. We watched her mature on the movie screen before our eyes in classics such as Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass, and West Side Story. But the story of what she endured, of what her life was like when the doors of the soundstages closed, had long been obscured. Based on years of astonishing research, Natalie Wood (previously published as Natasha) raises the curtain on Wood’s turbulent life. Award-winning author Suzanne Finstad conducted nearly four hundred interviews with Natalie Wood’s family, close friends, legendary costars, lovers, film crews, and virtually everyone connected to her death. Through these firsthand accounts, Finstad reconstructs a life of emotional abuse and exploitation, of unimaginable fame, great loneliness, and loss. She reveals painful truths in Wood’s complex relationships with James Dean, Frank Sinatra, Warren Beatty, and, of course, Robert Wagner. Thirty years after Natalie Wood’s death, the L.A. Sheriff’s Department reopened the investigation into her drowning using Finstad’s groundbreaking research and chilling, hour-by-hour timeline of that tumultuous weekend as evidence. Within a year, the L.A. Coroner changed Natalie Wood’s death certificate from “Accidental Drowning” to “Drowning and Other Undetermined Factors.” In 2018, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department officially named Wagner a “Person of Interest” in Wood’s death. In this updated edition, Finstad will share her explosive findings from the last two decades. With her unprecedented access to the LASD’s “Murder Book,” ignored by the original investigators, and new witnesses who have never spoken publicly, Finstad uncovers what really happened to Natalie Wood on that fateful boating trip in 1981 with Wagner and Christopher Walken. She expands on intimate details from Wood’s unpublished memoir, which affirms her fear of drowning and the betrayal by Wagner that shattered their first marriage. Finstad tells this heartbreaking story with sensitivity and grace, revealing a complex and conflicting mix of fragility and strength in a woman who was swept along by forces few could have resisted.
In Policing China, Suzanne E. Scoggins delves into the paradox of China's self-projection of a strong security state while having a weak police bureaucracy. Assessing the problems of resources, enforcement, and oversight that beset the police, outside of cracking down on political protests, Scoggins finds that the central government and the Ministry of Public Security have prioritized "stability maintenance" (weiwen) to the detriment of nearly every aspect of policing. The result, she argues, is a hollowed out and ineffective police force that struggles to deal with everyday crime. Using interviews with police officers up and down the hierarchy, as well as station data, news reports, and social media postings, Scoggins probes the challenges faced by ground-level officers and their superiors at the Ministry of Public Security as they attempt to do their jobs in the face of funding limitations, reform challenges, and structural issues. Policing China concludes that despite the social control exerted by China's powerful bureaucracies, security failures at the street level have undermined Chinese citizens' trust in the legitimacy of the police and the capabilities of the state.
Discover the amazing Gelli Arts® plate—a revolutionary printmaking surface that makes it easy to produce one-of-a-kind artwork with amazing colors and textures! Gelli Arts® Printing Guide will show you how to use gelatin printing to create 32 stunning designs of layered prints, decorative pages for art journals, fabric for quilting, handmade greeting cards, and more! This newly expanded edition contains an updated art gallery featuring the latest Gelli Arts® plate techniques.
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