Short inspirational & motivational stories from an old country boy. Stories of faith, encouragement and life lessons that I hope will touch you and help you in someway.

A collection of short stories of a country boy growing up on a rural farm in Louisiana with a few personal thoughts along the way.

While in the subway car, on the sidewalk, or at our favorite restaurant, we are surrounded by a sea of individuals who all too often become a mass ocean of humanity. While we visually see each of these individuals, how often do we dare look beneath the surface to the heart of an individual? In the spirit of classical poetic volumes like The Spoon River Anthology, Robert Mahan captures the untold stories of the silent individuals around each of us, from the child watching his parents' divorce to the brokenhearted widow. Inspirational Seasons brings to life the hopes, dreams, and fears of the people that surround us.

What stands out in this memoir is above all the work that he has treated with exceptional seriousness from the very beginning, describing himself as the "little screw that drives itself into the grand technology as all round machinist and invincible form grinder." Readers not familiar with modern technology will have to be impressed in this fascinating story by the thoroughness with which the author describes complicated production processes and high-precision items produced by his skilled hands. Also astonishing is his ability to recollect the details of social interactions in the workplace as well as among the neighbors. Besides work, the most important place is occupied by the family. A separate, but an equally important "hobby" is history and politics, both the grand one and the smaller, local one. Everywhere, whether at work, at home or social occasions, he participated in discussions, impressing everyone with his historical knowledge and his levelheaded outlook on current developments in the USA, the world, Poland, and Iraq. He also was, is, and always will be a great patriot, an "ambassador of the Polish cause." After all, as he writes in the closing sentences of his memoirs, "neither education nor wealth is important; what is important for us is to represent our country with dignity, wherever we might find ourselves." From the Foreword by Wladyslaw Sobecki

The title Verses of Inspirational Christian Exaltation (VOICE) was chosen to inspire readers to develop a closer relationship with Jesus while providing them with thoughts of faith, hope, comfort, and happiness in their daily journey through life. The human voice is the method used to spread God's Word.

About the Author Betty Virginia Shrader was raised on a farm outside of Bluefield, WV. Her father and mother had eleven children, and she is the youngest. On their farm, her family raised cows, horses, pigs and chickens. She married her husband at the age of nineteen, and they raised three sons. They moved out to the country where they continue to live at this time. In other words, they love just being country. God has blessed them with three sons, 3 daughter in laws, six grandchildren, one step-grandson, and seven great-grandchildren. She loves the West Virginia mountains, and the birds, squirrels, deer and ducks that go there to have their young ones every year. Through her poetry, she wants to share the goodness of God, his mercy and his forgiveness. She attends a small church with her husband. She hopes her poetry will bless others, lift them up and carry them through the hard times.

This book is a study of the complex relationship between matter and idea that shaped the nineteenth-century culture of art, and that in turn determined the course of still-current accounts of art's nature and value. Fundamental questions about the effects of material conditions on the creation and reception of art arose as early as the nineteenth century, and put important pressures on later eras. The place of class distinctions in the making and reception of art, the relationship between copy and original, the effects of display on art appreciation, even the role of pleasure itself: this book treats these and related issues as productive conceptual challenges with an unresolved relationship to matter at their core. Drawing on recent scholarship on the history of art and its institutions, Material Inspirations places cultural developments such as the emergence of new sites for exhibition and the astonishing proliferation of printed reproductions alongside a wide range of texts including novels, poems, travel guidebooks, compendia of antiquities, and especially the great line of critical writing that emerged in the period. The study vivifies a dynamic era, which is still too often seen as static and unchanging, by emphasizing the transformations taking place throughout the period in precisely those areas that have appeared to promise little more than repetition or continuity: collection, exhibition, and reproduction. The book culminates with the two great critics of the period, John Ruskin and Walter Pater, but it also includes close analysis of other prose writers, as well as poets and novelists ranging from William Blake to Robert Browning, George Eliot to Henry James. Significant developments addressed include the vogue for the representation of Old Masters in the first half of the century, ongoing innovations in the creation and diffusion of reproductions, and the emergence of the field of art history itself. At the heart of each of these the book identifies a material pressure shaping concepts, texts, and works of art.