Picking Wings Off Butterflies

David Stahlecker was six years old when his life changed forever. He was walking home from school one afternoon when he was struck by a speeding car and suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). In Picking Wings Off Butterflies, David's father recalls that dreadful day and the years that followed, revealing a relationship that is as tumultuous as it is endearing. Both of them seek to move past the tragedy to live meaningful lives, but just as everything seems to be heading in the right direction, they're derailed by the American justice system. Humorous and brutally honest, this memoir celebrates the sacred relationship between a father and son. Ultimately, their search for meaning leads one of them to find God and the other to lose his faith. Be prepared to delve deep into the darkest motives of the human heartand paradoxicallyto be nourished by the tenacity of the human spirit with Picking Wings Off Butterflies.

"Gordon floated out of the commander's office. He sensed his fortunes had turned 180 degrees. On the pinnacle of a phenomenal high, incandescing like lights on Broadway, he now believed that the backbreaking labor he had performed for his father on the roofs of Brooklyn had a larger purpose. His feet carried him to where his prayer book lay open to the well-worn page containing the sentence" and the Lord shall raise an ensign " "And the Lord Shall Raise an Ensign" is a World War II male Cinderella story of sorts-with seductive and serendipitous twists. Charles Gordon, a handsome, well-spoken Jew from a poor working-class Yankee family, enters a naval officer's program along with almost exclusively southern classmates. With some fairy-godmother luck and remarkable feats of derring-do, accomplished despite the erection of malicious and prejudicial obstacles, Gordon eventually becomes an oddball hero among awestruck peers and admiring superiors. After earning the rank of ensign, an unexpected sequence of events ends with the virgin officer serving brilliantly as the Navy's youngest lead fighter director on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific war zone. Unforeseen and unjust consequences of dangerous liaisons, however, threaten to destroy him completely.

After she, her older brother, and their father move from Chicago to Maryland, Alice has trouble fitting into her new third grade class, but with the help of some new friends and her own unique outlook, she survives.

It was an age of innocence and sometimes ignorance. I want to memorialize what a wonderful era it was in which to be a child and to grow old. It began as a chronological biography, but that was not the way life is lived. Stuff happens and rehappens, appears and disappears, changes and remains the same. Thus my memories and emotions became a haphazard collection of short sketches and stories. Early on the decision was made to mainly include the good "stuff." We begin this saga with my grandmother Jenny's story. the matriarch of the clan. "Jenny Cantrell was born October 29, 1858, in a farmhouse near Red Sulphur Springs. She is one-half of a set of twin daughters born to James and Elizabeth Ratliff. Mrs. Cantrell grew up on a farm in Mercer County near Littlesburg. One year a young Charlestonian, James M. Cantrell came to Mercer County "to take an interest in the mines." They fell in love and at 16 years of age, Jenny Ratliff became his bride."

This introduction to the philosophy of the environment examines current debates on how we should think about the natural world and our place within it. The subject is examined from a determinedly analytic philosophical perspective, focusing on questions of value, but taking in attendant issues in epistemology and metaphysics as well. The book begins by considering the nature, extent and origin of the environmental problems with which we need to be concerned. Chapters go on to consider familiar strategies for dealing with environmental problems, and then consider what sort of things are of direct moral concern, examining in turn at animals, non-sentient life-forms, natural but non-living things and deep ecology. The final part of the book investigates notions of value, natural beauty and the place of human beings in the scheme of things.

Women of Will is a fierce and funny exploration of Shakespeare’s understanding of the feminine. Tina Packer, one of our foremost Shakespeare experts, shows that Shakespeare began, in his early comedies, by writing women as shrews to be tamed or as sweet little things with no independence of thought. The women of the history plays are much more interesting, beginning with Joan of Arc. Then, with the extraordinary Juliet, there is a dramatic shift: suddenly Shakespeare’s women have depth, motivation, and understanding of life more than equal to that of the men. As Shakespeare ceases to write women as predictable caricatures and starts writing them from the inside, his women become as dimensional, spirited, spiritual, active, and sexual as any of his male characters. Wondering if Shakespeare had fallen in love (Packer considers with whom, and what she may have been like), the author observes that from Juliet on, Shakespeare’s characters demonstrate that when women and men are equal in status and passion, they can—and do—change the world.