The Greased Watermelon

The Greased Watermelon PDF

Author: S.P. Moran

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2018-10-30

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1532061285

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“I’d rather be an optimist and a fool, than a pessimist and right” (Albert Einstein). It’s the summer of ’61 and fifteen-year-old Firpo has escaped the sweltering Bronx and gone up the lake to spend his vacation. He’s decided to find a girlfriend, a steady, just like the cool guys on American Bandstand dance with in South Philly. He figures it will be a cinch. What Firpo doesn’t figure on are the confounding consequences that result from mixing teenage hormones with young and stupid mental states. Journey back to a more innocent time as Firpo and his merry band of friends set out on a quest for love and the answer to life’s sweet mystery in the land of foolish optimists.

On My Honor

On My Honor PDF

Author: Jay Mechling

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2004-03-01

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0226517039

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In a timely contribution to current debates over the psychology of boys and the construction of their social lives, On My Honor explores the folk customs of adolescent males in the Boy Scouts of America during a summer encampment in California's Sierra Nevada. Drawing on more than twenty years of research and extensive visits and interviews with members of the troop, Mechling uncovers the key rituals and play events through which the Boy Scouts shapes boys into men. He describes the campfire songs, initiation rites, games, and activities that are used to mold the Scouts into responsible adults. The themes of honor and character alternate in this new study as we witness troop leaders offering examples in structure, discipline, and guidance, and teaching scouts the difficult balance between freedom and self-control. What results is a probing look into the inner lives of boys in our culture and their rocky transition into manhood. On My Honor provides a provocative, sometimes shocking glimpse into the sexual awakening and moral development of young men coming to grips with their nascent desires, their innate aggressions, their inclination toward peer pressure and violence, and their social acculturation. On My Honor ultimately shows how the Boy Scouts of America continues to edify and mentor young men against the backdrop of controversies over freedom of religious expression, homosexuality, and the proposed inclusion of female members. While the organization's bureaucracy has taken an unyielding stance against gay men and atheists, real live Scouts are often more open to plurality than we might assume. In their embrace of tolerance, acceptance, and understanding, troop leaders at the local level have the power to shape boys into emotionally mature men.

Buzz Books 2022: Fall/Winter

Buzz Books 2022: Fall/Winter PDF

Author:

Publisher: Publishers Lunch

Published: 2022-05-10

Total Pages: 1136

ISBN-13: 1948586509

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The 21st edition of Buzz Books is a treasure-trove of what readers value the most: substantial excerpts from titles scheduled for publication this fall and winter. Think of it as a compilation of nearly 60 great “singles.” Major bestselling authors such as Alice Feeney and John Irving are featured, along with literary greats Yiyun Li, Elizabeth McCracken, and Kamila Shamsie. Other sure-to-be popular titles are by Lauren Denton, Stephen Markley, and Ellen Marie Wiseman. Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors, and this edition is no exception with Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, Jamila Minnicks’ Moonrise Over New Jessup, and Kai Thomas’s In the Upper Country. Our nonfiction selections range from New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv’s exploration of trauma to Cin Fabré’s inspiring story of becoming a Wall Street Trader at 19. Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Thomas Ricks offers a look into the civil rights movement. Finally, we present ten early looks at new work up-and-coming young adult authors Kate Armstrong, Krystal Marquis, and Maya Prasad and more, as well as Nubia, a debut from actor Omar Epps.

Happenstance

Happenstance PDF

Author: Lester Fisher

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 642

ISBN-13: 1665535989

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A bastard boomer negotiates the maze of postwar America. Wrenched from his working single mother, and brought to Camp Pondosa by his grandfather who was Woods Manager for McCloud Rv. Lumber Co. After his WAC mother became X-ray tech at the McCloud hospital, and acquired a husband, the new family moved to R. A. Long’s “planned city” of Longview, Washington. A shocking change for a country-bumpkin kid. He attended Catholic School in this pretentious mill town with its socially stratified culture of mill workers, overlords and timber barons. Catholic indoctrination led to the Franciscan Seminary. He survived into his 6th year at the college of San Luis Rey, CA, when love won out. This young man left the pursuit of the priestly vocation to pursue the woman he had dated since his fifteenth year. First collegiate in his family, he and his girl entered the daunting halls of ivy at University of Washington. Engaged to his high school sweetheart, graduation approached in the turbulent years of 1969. A youth’s options were few during the Vietnam War. Having taken his Naval Officer Candidate School exam, he also applied for Peace Corps. The NOCS did not reply, but the Peace Corps invited him to Kenya. Parting with his xenophobic fiancé, he served in the idyllic Hills of Taita where began a romantic involvement with a Taita woman ... and her 3 children. Their happy two years together ended when he was exiled from Taita by his military induction notice. By happenstance, Richard Nixon had changed the course of his life. One young man’s account chronicles the most turbulent growth in United States history. These were expansions in technology, global influence, wealth, power, popular unrest, and human rights. These changed America from a isolationist, racist enclave, to the present confusing, liberating, imperialistic and ideologically-divided envy of the world.

Frankie Ravan

Frankie Ravan PDF

Author: F.A. Loomis

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1257653067

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Reading Frankie Ravan is like opening the windows of an Advent calendar; inspired by miniatures, pointillist paintings, and country quilts, the vignettes reveal a rural coming-of-age story full of adventure, delight, superstition, humor, and curiosity. Frankie--eight years old in 1958--grew up in Crawford's Nook, then on the old Ravan homestead on Upper Burnt Ruby Creek.During this period the mountain community was haunted by memories of untimely death. Frankie enjoyed his life with wonder until an awareness of these deaths entered his experience. He learned relief from the sadness of death when a nearly forgotten ancestor showed him how to look deeply into the beauty of the world. As he looked he sensed the presence of all those who had gone before; and they, too, were watching the world around him, hovering behind and above like vibrant images in frescoes on cathedral ceilings, observing something wondrous about their own and others' lives.

Beyond the Sunset

Beyond the Sunset PDF

Author: Ron Shafer

Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

Published: 2023-08-31

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13:

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In Beyond the Sunset, the sixth novel in Ron Shafer's There Is a River saga, two cultures repeatedly collide. Jude and Cory's world of love, embodied in their beautiful wedding and honeymoon, clashes with the world of the carnal thugs. The intelligent Todd Cravener, pitifully caught in the crossfire between the two worlds, deals with the overwhelming guilt of his girlfriend's death. Is there hope for such misdirected people who botch their lives so completely? In the words of one reader, "Todd is like many people today--forlorn, hopeless, and scared!" The lives of the antagonists and the protagonists of these two worlds crisscross in a series of breath-taking episodes which build to a riveting climax during Kittanning's Light-up Night when the inebriated stooges kidnap two innocent people. "That," a reader shares, "is one of the most suspenseful scenes I've read in modern fiction! My pulse soared!" Will the daring rescue scheme succeed?

The Neighborhood

The Neighborhood PDF

Author: Paul H. Price

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2021-10-22

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1665541938

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Childhood is the very foundation of adulthood. The ideals and expressions of life we hold in our adulthood have their origins and rudiments in the ideals and expressions of life we encounter and gather and live out in our youth. Be they feelings of worth or worthlessness, the vigor and hope of making something of ourselves, or an acquiescence to the belief that things of consequence are beyond our reach, or the lens of optimism or of doubt with which we view our own existence, all have their budding and beginnings in the experiences, or lack of experiences, of our childhood. And growing up in the 1950s and 1960s was at a very unique convergence of circumstances of combined societal, economical, political, spiritual, and cultural seismic shifting perhaps unlike any other era. We were a nation barely emerging from decades of world-wide wars and economic ruin and social survival, trying now to find our footing and our own stride and our equilibrium and our very identity. Never were we more communally encased and even secure in, and at the same time struggling to break out of, our traditions, our superstitions, our ignorance, our fears, our limitations, and our collective innocence.

Confessions of a High School Word Nerd

Confessions of a High School Word Nerd PDF

Author: Arianne Cohen

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2007-01-02

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1440627401

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Effortlessly acquire an SAT vocabulary through hilarious high school essays Every year, 9 million American students expend large amounts of time and energy preparing for proficiency and entrance exams like the SAT, ACT, PSAT, and SSAT with a heap of vocabulary flash cards and a fat volume of repetitive practice tests. Each one of them, along with their parents and teachers, wishes that there was a less painful way to prepare for test day. There is, and this book is the solution: a collection of ten well-written, entertaining essays by recent college-graduates-turned-writers that honestly and amusingly recount wild, traumatizing, and hilarious high-school events, using common SAT words as a study tool. (*gluteus: any of the large muscles of the buttocks; esp: gluteus maximus)

Crystal Lake, Tolland County

Crystal Lake, Tolland County PDF

Author: Lynn Kloter Fahy

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780738563688

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Crystal Lake lies between the towns of Tolland and Stafford on a five-mile-long triangular strip of land extending from the northeastern corner of Ellington. Attracted by the lake's sandy shore surrounded by forests of oak, chestnut, pine, and maple, early families of settlers called the lake Square Pond. In the 1890s, Crystal Lake became a destination resort. Its popularity extended through the advent of the interurban trolley and Depression-era auto trippers who stayed in the lake's hotels, cottages, and roadside tourist cabins. In the 1930s, the Sandy Beach Ballroom attracted the big bands of Duke Ellington, Guy Lombardo, and Cab Calloway. The ballroom also served as a roller-skating rink where young people from Ellington, Stafford, Rockville, and surrounding towns spent their leisure hours. Today Crystal Lake remains a popular getaway for fishing, swimming, and boating.