Waiting On The Bounty

A remarkable historical document, this diary describes a period before the telephone and indoor plumbing were commonplace in rural homes, a time when farm families in the Plains states were isolated from world events, and radio provided an enormously important link between farmsteads and the world at large. Waiting on the Bounty brings us unusual insights into the agricultural and rural history of the US, detailing the tremendous changes affecting farming families and small towns during the Great Depression.

Standing in the gap for a spouse can be one of the most difficult and heart wrenching experiences one can face in a marriage. In fact, most give up. I understand all too well. Watching my husband walk out of my family's life was a emotionally exhaustive experience. Coping with betrayal, rejection and loss, among other emotions, led to living life in a pit that always managed to do deeper. My decision to stand in the gap for my spouse, led me on a journey to learn, grow, trust and forgive. It was not an easy road, but a rewarding one that I am blessed to have traveled. In this devotional, I explain some of the lessons, scripture and prayers that helped rebuild my hope while standing and after restoration. If you are standing, contemplating the decision or ready to give up, take this walk with me. God has a plan for you while you are Waiting In The Wings.

In death, as in life, there are so many choices. Sometimes you make the right ones; sometimes you don’t. The difference is that in life, some of those questionable choices (truck-stop sushi, anyone?) have consequences. Death choices have consequences, too, except they’ll be someone else’s, not yours.

From the 1930s to the 1980s, the North American countryside faced a profound cultural transformation in which a once-unified rural society became fragmented and dispersed. Families wishing to remain on the farm were required to accept new levels of automation, while others, unwilling or unable to make the change, migrated to nearby towns or regional cities. The cultural reformulation that resulted saw the emergence of a genuine rural diaspora. The growing cultural and physical separation was especially true for close-knit, ethno-religious communities, Mennonites, in particular. Forced into regional cities, the kaleidoscopic urban culture further fragmented the Mennonites into disparate social entities. In Diaspora in the Countryside, the phenomena of rural fragmentation is examined by comparing and contrasting two closely-related but distinctive Dutch-Russian Mennonite communities located in different parts of the continent: Kansas and Manitoba, respectively. By systematically comparing these communities, two distinctive responses to the mid-twentieth century 'Great Disjuncture' are made apparent. Royden Loewen also contrasts the cultural changes of these farm families to the cultures their kin adopted in nearby towns and cities. Loewen charts not only the dispersion of two rural communities, but follows their former residents as they reformulate their lives in new settings.

Boba Fett fears only one enemy--the one he cannot see.... Feared and admired, respected and despised, Boba Fett enjoys a dubious reputation as the galaxy's most successful bounty hunter. Yet even a man like Boba Fett can have one too many enemies.... When Boba Fett stumbles across evidence implicating Prince Xizor in the murder of Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle, Fett makes himself an enemy even he fears: the unknown mastermind behind a monstrous deception, who will kill to hide his tracks. Fett also finds himself in possession of an amnesiac young woman named Neelah, who may be the key to the mystery--or a decoy leading Fett into a murderous ambush. Fett's last hope is to run through the list of Xizor's hidden enemies. And since Xizor's hidden enemies are almost as legion as Fett's, the chance of survival is slim--even for someone as skilled and relentless as Boba Fett. Features a bonus section following the novel that includes a primer on the Star Wars expanded universe, and over half a dozen excerpts from some of the most popular Star Wars books of the last thirty years! © 1999 Lucasfilm Ltd. and TM. All rights reserved. Used under authorization.

A groundbreaking work that reveals how Marlon Brando shaped his legacy in art and life. When people think about Marlon Brando, they think of the movie star, the hunk, the scandals. In Brando’s Smile, Susan L. Mizruchi reveals the Brando others have missed: the man who collected four thousand books; the man who rewrote scripts, trimming his lines to make them sharper; the man who consciously used his body and employed the objects around him to create believable characters; the man who loved Emily Dickinson’s poetry. To write this biography, Mizruchi gained unprecedented access to a vast number of annotated books from Brando’s library, hand-edited copies of screenplays, private letters, and recorded interviews that have never before been quoted in a biography. Original interviews with some of the still-living players from Brando’s life, including Ellen Adler, his one-time girlfriend and the daughter of his acting teacher Stella Adler, provide even deeper insight into the complex person whose intelligence belied the high-school dropout. Mizruchi shows how Brando’s embrace of foreign cultures and social outsiders led to his brilliant performances in unusual roles—a gay man, an Asian, a German soldier—to test himself and to foster empathy on a global scale. We also meet the political Brando: the civil rights activist, the close friend of James Baldwin, the actor who declined his Oscar to support Indian rights. More than seventy stunning—and many rare—photographs of Marlon Brando illuminate this portrait of the man who has left an astounding cultural legacy.