Somebody Like Us

Somebody Like Us PDF Author: Sarah Manoguerra
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1387569961
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description
Searching for a new life, Lola travels 5,000 miles to Morocco with her best friend Mia. Only to discover that you canÕt escape your past. Mia, learns that love can happen when you least expect it. Eliza finds her own path without a man at her side. The story of three best friends going through very different yet same life experiences. A coming of age for women in their thirties.

Somebody Like Us

Somebody Like Us PDF Author: Sarah Manoguerra
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1387569961
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description
Searching for a new life, Lola travels 5,000 miles to Morocco with her best friend Mia. Only to discover that you canÕt escape your past. Mia, learns that love can happen when you least expect it. Eliza finds her own path without a man at her side. The story of three best friends going through very different yet same life experiences. A coming of age for women in their thirties.

Last Lecture

Last Lecture PDF Author: Perfection Learning Corporation
Publisher: Turtleback
ISBN: 9781663608192
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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People Like Us

People Like Us PDF Author: Vince Montague
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557020905
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A collection of short stories about people both like us and yet unlike us. A surfer who lost his hand discovers his best friend's girlfriend on the waves of Ocean Beach; a desperate couple tries to recoup a way of life and a kidnapped daughter; a young tennis player learns about the complexities of family life and history; a father loses a child and faith in a political system. These stories have been published in literary magazines nationally, including Other Voices, Talking River Review, The Green Mountains Review, The Florida Review, and Nimrod: An International Journal.

Liars Like Us

Liars Like Us PDF Author: Mary Campisi
Publisher: Mary Campisi Books, LLC
ISBN: 1942158351
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Unlock the secrets in Reunion Gap What happens when destiny ignores the rules? Tate Alexander has the good luck to be born with looks and charm, and the bad luck to belong to a family where money and power mean more than honor and integrity. When he returns to Reunion Gap to take over his father’s company, he’s determined to uncover and right the wrongs his father committed. He’s also determined to win over Charlotte Donovan, the woman who’s stolen his heart. Charlotte Donovan is big on causes and vows no man will ever “own” her, especially a playboy who can’t commit to a vehicle, let alone a woman. However, her heart isn’t listening to her brain. The only way to battle that is to create a web of lies that keeps Tate believing she doesn’t care about him. But maybe she’s so busy keeping her lies in place that she almost misses the man’s devotion to his siblings, and his commitment to righting past wrongs his father committed. When the lies catch up with her, it’s not going to be easy for a man like Tate to forgive a woman who betrayed his trust. Will it be too late for them or can destiny step in once again and give them a chance at happiness? Reunion Gap series: Book One: Strangers Like Us Book Two: Liars Like Us Book Three: Lovers Like Us Book Four: Couples Like Us Book Five: Guilty Like Us BONUS MATERIAL: Included with this e-book is the first chapter of Lovers Like Us, Book Three in this series. "If you love books that make you laugh, smile, cry, and sigh, then Mary Campisi is the author for you." - USA Today bestselling author, Julianne MacLean

People Like Us

People Like Us PDF Author: Sandra Harnisch-Lacey
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310412536
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
“I want to die fully alive so my soul’s got extended capacity for heaven.”—Rob LaceyPeople Like Us is the story of Rob Lacey, poet, actor, and award-winning author of The Street Bible. It is so much more than Rob Lacey’s biography.A Long Way Home is the passionate and poetic account of an artistic soul enamored with God, and of the woman who loved him. It is a love story of two people, a writer and a dancer, born to be together for all eternity.A Long Way Home is the memoir Rob Lacey would have written himself.He never got the chance. In May 2006, Rob went to be with the God he adored. Foregoing medical treatment for cancer, he squeezed every last drop out of life that he possibly could, right up to the end. That’s just how Rob Lacey was.Now his wife and best friend, Sandra Harnisch-Lacey, shares Rob’s story, her story, their story. Vibrant with laughter and moistened with tears, A Long Way Home is a memoir of faith, hope, and love that endures forever.

Men Like Us

Men Like Us PDF Author: Hollis Shiloh
Publisher: Spare Words Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Ollie Boyd enjoys Jack Finley's company, likes to make him laugh, and wants to work with him...and maybe something more than that. It sure is confusing to have these feelings for another guy, and in the homophobic 1950s, it's not really safe. Jack Finley finds time for Ollie, sure, but he's just humoring a friend. He's a tough private eye. He's certainly not indulging secretly in a crush, no matter how attractive or charming Ollie might be. Jack's smart and careful, and he's been around the block. It's hard enough to be who he is without taking on extra trouble. But now Jack needs some help, after a botched Good Samaritan act leaves him broken in body and spirit. Ollie wants to be the one who's there for him. He also wants to figure out these feelings—even if they mean he's in pretty deep trouble. A whole lot of bumps in the road—including blackmail and murder—might take these two down more dangerous streets than they'd guess...together. 65,600 words

Friends Like Us

Friends Like Us PDF Author: Caitlin Davies
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847399541
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
1989. At the end of an idyllic summer holiday, four teenage girls swear to be 'blood sisters', sticking with one another through thick and thin, sharing their secrets come what may. 2005. The four friends' lives have followed very different paths. Single mother-of-two Loreenis struggling to make ends meet, endlessly searching for love via the internet. Just back from California, Karen can finally introduce her friends to her long-term lover. Belhas embarked on a controversial new career as a paparazzi, anxious to make her way in a tough man's world. And Ashley has not been in touch. Just why is she keeping so quiet about her new boyfriend? Despite their pledge, all four women have been keeping secrets from one another. Secrets that finally burst into the open - with surprising and shocking results.

Black Like Us

Black Like Us PDF Author: Devon W. Carbado
Publisher: Cleis Press
ISBN: 1573447145
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
Chronicles one hundred years of African-American homosexual literature, from the turn-of-the-century writings of Alice Dunbar Nelson, to the Harlem Renaissance of Langston Hughes, to the emerging sexual liberation movements of the later postwar era as reflected by James Baldwin. Original.

Machines like Us

Machines like Us PDF Author: Ronald J. Brachman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262547325
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
How we can create artificial intelligence with broad, robust common sense rather than narrow, specialized expertise. It’s sometime in the not-so-distant future, and you send your fully autonomous self-driving car to the store to pick up your grocery order. The car is endowed with as much capability as an artificial intelligence agent can have, programmed to drive better than you do. But when the car encounters a traffic light stuck on red, it just sits there—indefinitely. Its obstacle-avoidance, lane-following, and route-calculation capacities are all irrelevant; it fails to act because it lacks the common sense of a human driver, who would quickly figure out what’s happening and find a workaround. In Machines like Us, Ron Brachman and Hector Levesque—both leading experts in AI—consider what it would take to create machines with common sense rather than just the specialized expertise of today’s AI systems. Using the stuck traffic light and other relatable examples, Brachman and Levesque offer an accessible account of how common sense might be built into a machine. They analyze common sense in humans, explain how AI over the years has focused mainly on expertise, and suggest ways to endow an AI system with both common sense and effective reasoning. Finally, they consider the critical issue of how we can trust an autonomous machine to make decisions, identifying two fundamental requirements for trustworthy autonomous AI systems: having reasons for doing what they do, and being able to accept advice. Both in the end are dependent on having common sense.

Together Let Us Sweetly Live

Together Let Us Sweetly Live PDF Author: Jonathan C. David
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025207419X
Category : African American Methodists
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Together Let Us Sweetly Live THE SINGING AND PRAYING BANDS By Jonathan C. David UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS Copyright © 2007 the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-252-07419-6 List of Hymn Notations...............................................................................ix Preface..............................................................................................xi Map..................................................................................................xxi Introduction.........................................................................................1 1. Alfred Green (1908-2003)..........................................................................43 2. Mary Allen (b. 1925)..............................................................................59 3. Samuel Jerry Colbert (b. 1950)....................................................................75 4. Gertrude Stanley (b. 1926)........................................................................100 5. Rev. Edward Johnson (1905-91).....................................................................128 6. Cordonsal Walters (b. 1913).......................................................................149 7. Susanna Watkins (1905-99).........................................................................164 8. Benjamin Harrison Beckett (1927-2005) and George Washington Beckett (b. 1929).....................176 9. Gus Bivens (1913-96)..............................................................................197 Sources..............................................................................................209 A Note on the Recording..............................................................................215 Index................................................................................................221 Introduction IN THE EARLY YEARS of the twentieth century, according to the older people of today, many African American residents of tidewater Maryland and Delaware would, in late summer, set aside their tools, leave their cornfields just when the tassels on each stalk turned golden and the tips of each blade changed from green to brown, abandon their tomatoes when a soft blush of red appeared on the hard green fruit, allow, for a time, their beans and sweet potatoes and melons to mature on their own, and make their way by horse and wagon, by car, or by bus to a Methodist camp meeting to attend to their sacred work. Those who had moved to the nearby cities of Baltimore, Wilmington, or Philadelphia in search of the higher wages and the excitement that urban life seemed to offer returned home by land or by water, traveling perhaps on one of the ferries that plied the Chesapeake or Delaware bays from city to town, from shore to shore, and back again. If the camp meeting was nearby, some individuals, families, or groups of unrelated church members might attend nightly services and return home to sleep, to work the next day perhaps, but then steadfastly to make their way right back to that same camp meeting for the next night's service, and the next, until that camp meeting's final, cathartic day. During several of the old-time country camp meetings, however, many would unhitch their horses, arrange all the separate wagons into a circle around a wooden-roofed tabernacle, arch a sheet of canvas over each wagon, and stay right there on the church ground for the duration of the meeting. Women would bring baskets and cheese boxes filled to the brim with fried chicken, home-smoked ham, biscuits, cabbage, and green beans. Men and boys would dig up old pine stumps and pile them high on the campgrounds, to be placed on fire stands and set ablaze to give light to each evening's spectacle. In the heat of the summer, when the ground might be parched and dust might billow-when you couldn't even walk across the ground barefoot, it was so hot-everyone lived in the shade, and "everyone had a good time," as one person recounted later. For two weeks, an intense but relaxed, joyful, communal "laboring in the Spirit" manifested itself in a day-after-day pattern of an exuberant testimony service, followed by a rousing preaching service, followed at last by a climactic, regionally distinct Singing and Praying Band service. During this latter service, in a maneuver that scholars might refer to as a "ring shout," participants formed a circle with a leader in the center; singing and clapping their hands, stamping their feet, and swaying their bodies all the while, they slowly "raised" several hymns and spirituals to a raucous, rejoicing, shouting crescendo, concluding the meeting with an ebullient march around the entire encampment. Although these bands shocked some outsiders and reminded other observers of Africa, committed participants considered them to be the foundation of the church. Camp meetings were not unique to this area or to that time at the dawn of the twentieth century. Drawn by the heady combination of religious salvation and spiritual democracy advocated in these festivals, Americans of various backgrounds had been making such yearly treks to camp meetings for over a hundred years. Those early meetings gave form to a religious movement attuned to the ethos of the new nation. In the frontier areas of Tennessee and Kentucky where they began, camp meetings sponsored by various Protestant denominations became temporary sacred cities, places of equality of souls and social solidarity that tempered the struggle to survive in the wilderness. In the states of the upper South and in Pennsylvania, these meetings also thrived. Here, where the camp meetings were predominantly organized by Methodists, both free and enslaved African Americans participated in large numbers along with English- and German-speaking European Americans. Perhaps because of Methodism's original antislavery witness, in Maryland, for example, this denomination received most of the black converts, while in 1800, approximately one-fifth of the Methodists in Virginia were black. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, white and black people alike frequently attended the same religious services, though often in segregated and unequal seating arrangements. Yet that century witnessed a complex and powerful movement to establish separate religious institutions for black Methodists. First came the effort to set up separate churches for Africans. Eventually the Methodist Episcopal Church organized a separate conference for all black churches within its denomination. A related movement led to the founding of independent, African Methodist denominations. Finally, beginning before Emancipation but accelerating after freedom, a similar but less-remarked effort saw African American Methodists starting camp meetings of their own. In the mid-Atlantic region in particular, these large, outdoor, African American religious events were the meetings that the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's participants built and today's older people witnessed when young. These camp meetings continue even in the twenty-first century. The camp meetings that the old soldiers of today recall were not unique; they were merely one echo of the religious festivals that became a new secular democracy's first religious mass movement. Yet the old-timers of today recall, above all other things, those aspects of their camps that were unique. That is, they speak mostly about the Singing and Praying Bands, for whom the camp meetings in this area became the primary regional showcases; these bands made these meetings special. They tell of the prayer meetings from which the camp meetings originated. They speak also of the march around Jericho, in which the Singing and Praying Bands led those at the camp meeting in a grand march around the entire campground on the final day of the meeting. * * * The Singing and Praying Bands of this area were special not just for the generations of participants in the African American camp meetings of the Atlantic coast states of the upper South. The antecedents of the twentieth-century bands seem to have played a clandestine but significant role in the development of African American culture in general. Therefore, the bands can stake a claim as important forces in the cultural and social history of America as a whole. Here is how it happened. At the end of the eighteenth century, when enslaved Africans in this area began to take to Methodism in a big way, the process of culture building by which Africans of various ethnic backgrounds began to transform themselves into one people was well underway. Yet that process was still incomplete. The new African American identity became consolidated throughout the South only during the first half of the nineteenth century, when hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were traumatically sold from the states of the upper South to cotton-growing areas of the Deep South. In the eighteenth century, prior to this mass transfer of human property, there had been two primary centers of slavery on the Atlantic coast of North America: coastal South Carolina and the Chesapeake Bay area. The ethnic mix of Africans imported into the two areas differed somewhat, leading to the possibility that the emerging African American cultures of these areas might also have differed. Of these two centers, the Chesapeake area had the larger number of slaves. In 1790, of all thirteen states, Virginia had the largest population of Africans, with 305,493 people. Maryland was second, with 111,079. Virginia also had the largest number of enslaved Africans-292,627-while Maryland's enslaved population of 103,036 was third largest. These two states also had the largest population of non-slave Africans at the time. In 1790, nearly 53 percent of the African population and 58 percent of the enslaved Africans in the country were in the upper South, in the states of Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The nearby black populations of southeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern New Jersey had extensive cultural ties to their brethren in the upper South. This area where the upper South meets the mid-Atlantic states seems to have been one of several areas central to the formation of African American culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among the Africans in America of that time, for example, those who lived in the mid-Atlantic region and upper South were pioneers in building specifically black institutions. In 1787, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others founded a mutual aid organization in Philadelphia called the Free African Society, initiating, in the words of W. E. B. DuBois, "the first wavering step of a people toward organized social life." Numerous other grassroots benevolent and mutual aid organizations sprouted up at this time, aiming to provide members financial assistance in case of sickness or death in the family. Under the leadership of Richard Allen in Philadelphia, a group of black Methodists established the Bethel African Church in that city in 1794. In 1816, Bethel joined ranks with other independent black Methodist churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Baltimore to form the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) denomination. In Wilmington, the denomination called the Union Church of Africans was established just prior to the founding of the A.M.E. Church. Along with new institutions, a distinctly African American expressive culture was emerging in the upper South and mid-Atlantic region at the dawn of the nineteenth century. In 1819, for example, a white minister named John Fanning Watson, who lambasted many Methodists for what he saw as excesses in their worship, gave us one of the earliest reports of a specifically black religious song tradition, writing that "the coloured people get together, and sing for hours together, short scraps of disjointed affirmations, pledges, or prayers, lengthened out with long repetition choruses." In the same paragraph, Watson's description of these sacred performances by black worshippers is strikingly evocative of outdoor singing circles that the Singing and Praying Bands continue to this day. This account predates by over twenty-five years the earliest known description of a ring shout from the Atlantic coast area of the Deep South. Another writer, a Quaker schoolboy from Westtown School outside Philadelphia, described black worshippers at an outdoor camp meeting in 1817 marching around an outdoor tabernacle, singing a spiritual chorus and blowing a trumpet, in a reenactment of the march around Jericho by Joshua and the Israelites that is similar to the march that the Singing and Praying Bands continue to do today. If we look at these historical references with minds informed by the bands of today, we can project the current tradition to have been already thriving two hundred years ago, in the early years of the nineteenth century. This nascent African American expressive culture articulated new belief systems that were forming among Africans in this area, also to a certain extent in the context of Protestant evangelism. Africans in America developed a variant of this branch of Protestantism that expressed protonationalist African American identity. According to this theology of resistance, African American Christians began to associate their experience in America with that of the Israelites in Egypt, and the person of Jesus took on some of the qualities of Moses, who would not fail to liberate the enslaved. It was to some extent in the religious meetings of the upper South and in the language of this distinctive African American perspective that Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner situated their rebellions in Virginia. (Continues...) Excerpted from Together Let Us Sweetly Live by Jonathan C. David Copyright © 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.