One of the national lawn care companies states in its sales brochure that it’s got chemicals for early spring to deal with “winter stresses” In the early summer it has chemicals to help you “prepare” for the nasty summer. In the early fall the candy man has the elixir to help your sensitive mono-turf recover from the “stresses of summer.” And of course they promise winter protection for your lawn’s “winter survival.” How did nature survive before humans developed all these chemicals and tools to create and protect our precious, artifi ...continued...

11 is a very important number in my life. Let me tell you why. I was born at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year, the 11th child of the 12 that my mother and father had in total. Of the 10 that had been born before me, only four were still living when I was born; four of the six who had died had not reached their first birthday. Of the four then alive, only two survive to this day. So out of 12 children, only the last four , including me, are,as at the time of starting writing this story in 2013, still living. And, as with most births at that time a ...continued...

It must have been the wet rainy day that drove me to my cleaning frenzy. “Time to clean out the closets”, I thought to myself. After all, the holidays are quickly approaching and the house will be full of out of town guests! Little did I know that my cluttered closets would open the doors to so many memories tucked away. Amidst the boxes of papers and old framed pictures was a box of various trinkets, cards and perfumes from my mother. Sighing, I remembered this would be the ninth winter without her. I picked up the nearly dried ...continued...

My Great Escape 4/20/15-email from agent after reading my whole The Color Eater manuscript. I’m super excited because I know an email like this means I’m getting close. There’s merit in my writing. Includes the phrase “I really liked a lot about it; the writing was excellent, the action was well-executed, and the different powers people had were super cool.” Followed by lengthy suggestions where the story could be fleshed out in addition to an invitation to resubmit once re-writes are done. 4/22/15-Panic attack at the ide ...continued...

I found two great resources that were very informative and related to cultural awareness as well as health professions. Shaya, Fadia T., and Confidence M. Gbarayor. "The Case for Cultural Competence in Health Professions Education." American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 15 Dec. 2006. Web. 03 Apr. 2017. This first resource explains how it is necessary for cultural competence to be taught in health professional curriculums. This resource stated how it is necessary to look at the true health issues among dif ...continued...

Although I never thought of myself to be 'prejudiced' or 'biased', I do understand that my beliefs would great impact my work as a healthcare professional. When I had taken the Cultural Competence Self Assessment Survery, I quickly came to a scary realization that I did know as much as I thought I did. For example, there was a question regarding non-verbal communication (pointing fingers, thumbs up, etc) that I had thought was universal. In fact, I was wrong, as I did not realize there are many different ways facial expressions and gestures could be interpreted as. Not surprisi ...continued...

I love the bumper sticker that reads “Put something exciting between your legs.” In 1961 I bought a 1942 Harley for fifty dollars. I had to do it in secret because my father said I could only have a motorcycle over his dead body. One morning my father was having coffee at the local drug store with Mr. Wood, who had a son, Billy, who was a classmate of mine. “Frank,” he says, “my son wants to buy a motorcycle. I told him that no father in his right mind would ever let his son get something as dangerous as a motorcycle. Then he tells me, your son has one, so it must ...continued...

In amongst my ‘heaven-like’ existence, there was aching pain and anger and turmoil that was outside of my bubble, not even two steps away from me. To this day I cannot describe exactly what went on around me because I was too young to understand the reasons or the details. All I knew was that we had our patriarch and our entire household revolved around what he wanted and how he wanted it. I could not comprehend it because to me he was loving and yielding and I would never have been able to match the two personalities into one soul. But there were endl ...continued...

Throughout the history of the world, philosophers and religions have disagreed on many things. But they have all agreed on one thing …only one! You become what you think about. Read that sentence again. Most people hear it, but don’t truly understand it. You become that which you think about most of the time. We place value on material, replaceable things and very little value to the most irreplaceable thing of all. Our freedom of thought. Thoughts establish Habits, Attitudes, and Emotions&hellip ...continued...

Right now im going to tell you my story from my perspective it started in 2006.It was my six birthday all my life i was a single child free to do as i please and get what i want but its suprized me how fast that could change.It all started with my moms friend coming to live with us her name was danielle it was a couple weeks after christmas when it happend i woke up to find my dad was gone in the middle of the night and my mom was sleeping i walked to the kitchen ...continued...

North Pole ...continued...

Hello, everyone, I am not a writer at all but its something i have been thinking about doing since i was 12 years old. i Have a story i want to tell. I dont want to tell it to make money or get famous. Its a story i want to tell everyone who is or have went through stuff an cant seem to get through it. to let people know everything happens for a reason something good always comes from something bad. The story i want to tell is about my life from the age of ten till the age of 20. From me being molested to me getting married. I think i could get to a lot of people. I want to do something good f ...continued...

I woke up this morning hoping to hear nothing other than the occasional stirring of our guides like in mornings past. Instead I was greeted with the sounds of an angry Artic wind. We are in a full blown whiteout and cannot move. The blowing wind fills the air with snow that smashes into your face. It's best described like you see if you are driving into a snow storm on the freeway. The kind of storm that cars pull under over passes for a little reprieve. Our sturdy little tent is our life source. We have to conserve fuel because there is no predicting how long we are here. So no stov ...continued...

From the start it was like a secret society. You needed to know the handshake or password to get information. I guess that is why it took so long to start this incredible journey as a writer. Since the age of six, when I first started to read, a book was always under my nose. This started it, and from that point reading the written word became a very important part of my life. I could not tell you how many books I have read, or plan to in the near or far future. It started in 2011, when an uncontrollable desire to write short stories took over. I would hammer out words between work assig ...continued...

One summer afternoon when i was about (10) years old, I sat on the bank of the farm pond, daydreaming and listening to a red winged blackbird sing. While Dad fixed the door of the corncrib the wind had torn off, Sunny, our Australian Shepard, plunged into the water in front of me. Barking and biting at the sparkling droplets that splashed in front of his face, he swam toward a flock of Canada geese, herding them along as they honked and flapped their wings. About twenty feet from the bank, the geese seemed to realize they had Sunny outnumbered. They did an about-face, honking loudly with th ...continued...