Thinkin Drinkin

While describing and even celebrating some of the many benefits of drinking wine, beer and spirits (hard liquor) in moderation, Richard Thatchers Thinkin Drinkin also shares an abundance of ideas and scientific evidence that, when taken together, add up to a cautionary tale about careless drinking. The book is informed by Thatchers own troubled, early, and long-sustained experience with alcohol and his subsequent success at getting the problem under control. In addition, he brings a wealth of professional expertise to his writing task. Dr. Thatcher draws upon various aspects of that accumulated knowledge to inform and provide guidance to help teens and young adults establish enjoyable, safe, worry-free approaches to drinking. These approaches can be readily adapted to any healthy lifestyle and can become good habits that last a lifetime. The author firmly believes that, if widely adopted, those good habits will save an enormous amount of heartache, emotional and physical injury, and many thousands of lives.

On his fortieth birthday, Brian announced to his family that his goal was to cycle from Canada to Mexico and from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts of the US. Over the next ten years, he explored the highways and trails of the country, stopping each evening to meet the locals in the pubs and taverns that only come alive at night. From a face-off with a languishing alligator in a Louisiana bayou to a strange evening with a wealthy and eccentric hot-air balloon enthusiast in Tennessee, his trips were never dull, and often had him wondering how he ever got into this mess. In the end, he learned that the heart of the country is not the winding mountain roads or desert highways, but the kindness, openness, and downright weirdness of its people. This collection of short stories is gathered from his adventures while perched atop the famed American barstool—with a little cycling thrown in for good measure.

The poems are about life, love, passion, sense, and nonsense.

SURVIVAL It's true!There are no great people. There are only great challenges that some ordinary people must rise to meet. Much has been written about those individuals who have risen to meet such challenges. Their stories fascinate us because we love a winner, a survivor, a hero. PEACE IN THE RED ROCK VALLEY is an alcoholic's own gripping yet hilariously heartwarming story of survival. It is a story of the tragedy and heartbreak and of the humor and mirth of an unexpected diversion into, the journey through and finally, recovery from an incessant, merciless, yet subtle and almost fatal addiction to a drug that happens to be called alcohol. It is an entertaining exposé of the bizarre workings and ravaging power of the alcoholic mind left unchecked and of the surprising simplicity of recovery from such a demoralized state. It'll have you laughing and then it will invade your heart. Because of the stigma attached, not many of our stories have been told but with today's open-mindedness toward addiction, those of us who have survived it might just also be heroes. There is one thing for certain; our stories are definitely fascinating.

This piece of historical fiction is a coming of age story and more-than-memoir that bridges the early 1950s through today . . . sharing little known facts and demonstrating that life is more interesting than plain fiction. With one boy white and the other black in segregated Mississippi, backwoods and riverbottom adventures are too exciting to allow these motherless seven-year-olds to consider the normal bigotry of the times. Childhood is grounded in mischief around Oxford's Baily Woods and in the rural community of Taylor. The Yocona and Little Tallahatchie Rivers help shape the area's youth, and their teen years find Scott and C.B. interacting with Weekend Warriors and the Klan. Summer jobs and outdoor experiences roughhew the boys into men. Adult complications in Sin City Memphis precede diverging paths with college forestry versus the logging woods, grad school versus a tour in Vietnam, and professional versus technical careers in the workplace. All the while, challenges and opportunities stretch from the commonplace to the controversial. During retirement, the two men volunteer and grow old. The book finishes with a twist the reader won' t be expecting.