Quests

Quests is a retelling of a fascinating series of championship NFL Football contests that have seen scores ranging from 7–0 to 73–0, dark suspicions of Underworld interference, a game played just inshore from a roiling Gulf of Mexico hurricane, featured teams with such names as the Boston Redskins, Chicago Cardinals and Cleveland Rams, played in blizzards, downpours and deserts been interrupted by a power failure featured brothers versus brothers, seen wild comebacks and wild collapses, a team that won the title it’s very first year in the league, and the birth and death of dynasties. Expect the Unexpected.

Quiet Before the Storm

In The Quiet Before the Storm, witness the aftermath of nature’s fury and the resilience of the human spirit. This powerful visual and emotional journey explores the catastrophic aftermaths of hurricanes Ike and Michael, the devastating tornadoes in Garland, Texas (2016), Dallas, Texas (2019), and Mayfield, Kentucky (2021), and the record-breaking flash flood in Wimberley, Texas (2015).

As an Austin firefighter and Texas Licensed Public Insurance Adjuster, I’ve captured the wreckage, miracles, and profound moments of despair and hope through my camera lens. This book is more than just photographs; it reflects on the interconnectedness of our lives and the forces of nature that shape them.

Each photograph, short story, and poem testifies to the enduring impact these events have had on me and the communities I serve. Amidst the devastation, there is beauty and resilience in the faces of those who rebuild their lives and the moments of kindness that emerge in the darkest times.

As you turn these pages, ponder the questions at the heart of our changing world. Is the increasing frequency and intensity of these disasters a result of global warming, human intervention, weather weapons, or ‘Acts of God’? While I may not have all the answers, I hope to spark conversations and inspire action to understand, prepare for, and mitigate the impact of the next rounds of storms.

Join me on this journey and find strength in the quiet before the storm, as we brace ourselves for the storms of weather and the chaos we face in our government.

Quitting By Design

Dr. Lynn Marie Morski knows how to address fears and prepare your health, relationships, and finances for a quit because she’s been there time and again. She has quit educational pursuits, jobs, careers, relationships, political parties…you name it; she’s found a way to quit it while maximizing the benefits and minimizing the challenges associated with major life changes. And she wants nothing more than to pass these skills along to you. With this book, Dr. Morski aims to pass on what she’s learned about quitting not only from her own experiences, but also through interviews with others who have made successful quits themselves. She tackles the stigma surrounding quitting, while highlighting what a useful and necessary tool it can be in carving out a life you enjoy.

Radical Resilience

In this incredible world of diversity, there is a darkness that blinds us from recognizing the beauty and value of all humanity. We are held hostage by our misconceptions, prejudices and fears.

How do we break free?

There is hope in the darkness. Beacons of light shine amongst us revealing the goodness of mankind. These courageous ones are moved by the people before them. They see into the human heart and respond with compassion. They understand their responsibility to partner for justice, creating a Radical Resilience that causes people to rise above their circumstances to thrive.

May the power of partnership create a Radical Resilience that changes the world.

Radical Sanctity

This book is about four radical and daring Catholic women – radical and daring because they chose to enter the American maelstrom of race. One, Katharine Drexel, became a saint in 2000. The others, Dorothy Day, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, and Sister Thea Bowman were all declared Servants of God – the title bestowed by the Catholic Church on those on the first rung of official sanctity. Of the four women, three are white, one is black; two were nuns; two were laywomen; three were converts; two were mothers; one was divorced; one lived in a common law marriage and had an illegitimate child as well as an abortion and a suicide attempt. What makes for sanctity? Clearly, it doesn’t mean obeying all the rules!

Reconsidering Medicine

This is an original book on the philosophy of medicine. It considers philosophy of medicine as a subdiscipline of philosophy of science. This volume is grounded on an epistemological bottom-up account that arises from the clinical situation, the epidemiologic, and the resulting public health account. It is not a review of the literature, and it is not intended to frame the debates, or to analyze and compare the various number of viewpoints.

Medicine is the human activity, which begins by a linguistic act that identifies the negative norms of health: it begins with a first distinction that splits biological processes into three conventional parts, normal, abnormal and pathologic. Neither of them is a natural kind. Being abnormal is intrinsically bad and admits of degrees, while being pathologic is dichotomous. Being normal is factitious and counterfactual much the same as frictionless planes in physics. Leaving apart the ethical aspects, this book endeavors to uncover the implicit conceptual network, the chief junctures of medicine, should they be found, and their articulations with clinical and community medicine. It results that medicine is pervaded with dichotomous concepts such as scientific vs pragmatic discourse, function and malfunction, abnormal and pathologic, needs and wants, causation and explanation, clinical vs community-oriented care, physical vs psychiatric diseases, mental illness vs deviancy, and so on. Medical thinking has two dimensions intrinsically interweaved, namely a constant amalgam and admixture of biological and normative aspects, so that this essential hybrid nature of the grammar of medicine endorses opposite approaches, naturalistic or normativist, biological or value-laden, realist or instrumental, reductionist or holistic, phenomenological or analytic.

Refrigerator Door

Refrigerator Door!

How one household item became the epicenter for cherished memories.

The refrigerator door – that communal billboard found in every home. Covered in photos, mementos, report cards, and takeout menus, this humble appliance takes on far greater meaning. It becomes a tapestry of everything important to a family.

In Refrigerator Door, author and father Thom reminisces on the refrigerator door of his childhood. This mosaic of fading photos and fridge magnets shaped his upbringing and brought his family together. Now Thom passes along the tradition to his own children, reminding them that even an ordinary door can be transformed into something extraordinary with the memories we choose to display.

Join Thom on this heartwarming journey that reveals how a refrigerator door quietly yet profoundly chronicles the story of a family. More than just a surface for sticking homework assignments and takeout menus, it is a celebration of all that gives our fast-paced lives meaning.

Remembering John Noel Dempsey: A Man Who Did Good

At a time when governors have been sent to jail, presidents have been impeached, and legislatures seem dedicated to gridlock, and adherence to blind partisanship trumps all else, it’s not hard to fathom why American people have become skeptical about politicians and cynical about the entire political process and downright disgusted at what is seen to be governmental shenanigans. It may come, then, as comfort to some and dubious to others to read about a politician who has been dubbed “the genuine article,” a man who personified the adage “what you see is what you get,” a person who believed that life was about giving and not about getting. That's the kind of man I grew up knowing, the kind of politician, who would no longer fit the current mold, the person I am honored to call “my father.”

Roads to COVID-19 Containment and Spread

Eight democratic countries traversed the road to remarkable containment of COVID-19 in 2020-2021, five without economically damaging shutdowns. During the first two years of the pandemic, the United States and the United Kingdom each had COVID-19 death rates per population 6 times higher than any one of these eight countries and more than 135 times the best. Why?  This book reveals successes and mistakes in science, governmental policies, and politics that vastly altered the incidence and severity of COVID-19 in different parts of the world. The author explains his research in a near conversational, human-focused approach understandable to nonscientists. The topics range from the nature of coronaviruses to the economic consequences of the pandemic. The movement toward a “new normal” of living with the virus is dangerous, he writes. Without recognition of governmental policy failures and implementation of new science-based policies, periodic surges in infections will continue and more lethal mutations cannot be ruled out.

Rooting Out Violence

Life and death are merged in the terror of unrelenting global violence. Rooting Out Violence describes a model, ‘Healthy Sensory-Emotional Integration,’ with the scope to help adults assess the human capacity for violence in themselves, in members of their communities, as well as, in leaders of their countries. The book provides a violence prevention model to mitigate trauma and human rights violations throughout our lifespans and throughout the world. Healthy Sensory-Emotional Integration is a public health model that is understandable and achievable globally.

The manuscript identifies how blind-sighted we have been historically by not emphasizing the number one variable in the capacity to commit a violent crime; for funding violence prevention in institutional siloes, such as, corrections and child protection programs, when the inner nature of each of us counts; and excluding comprehensive research on preventing trauma, not just funding treatment strategies.

Rune Elements

Sometimes, the best way to learn something is to do it. This book will take you by the hand and show how to actually make, finish, care for, and use the ancient runes in a way that is more "How to" than most books on the subject. This is specifically meant for the individuals who want to learn the uses of the Elder Futhark, not just the esoteric meanings and history of them. You'll learn about the various ways of making runes, bind-runes, talisman, and charms, as well as the many uses for them, both traditional and modern. Everything from the tools and techniques to the materials and accessories you might employ...all is explained in detail from a runemaster with over 30 years of practical experience.

Saving Eric

Mary's nightmare began when her seven-year-old adopted son inexplicably screamed before dinner one night. From that point on, her son's struggle became her struggle. Mental and physical illness, along with drug addiction, turned her life upside down. The love Mary had for her son, though, never waned as she desperately tried to save him from his demons. "Wonderfully written and moving. I can't recommend this book enough to any family who shares the experience of adoption or a struggle with a child's unpredictable, often violent mental health, along with the journey alongside an addiction." * -- Annie Highwater, "Unhooked" "A meaningful exploration of mental illness and addiction - two present-day tragedies." * -- Charles Rubin, "Don't Let Your Kids Kill You"