Breaking Wild Horses By Cindy Gray Sometimes my dreams, even the ones I don’t really remember, leave me with a strange feeling of exhilaration. It&rsqu ...continued...

Introduction I set about to clean out Mother’s house. In the spare bedroom, I opened the antique cabinet and drew out a stack of memorabilia. Halfway down the pile of old newspapers, I discovered a speckled brown ledger book with ragged edges. It crackled as I opened the yellowed pages. Each line contained a date and a comment on life in the 1880's. It was my great-grandfather Sanford’s diary. The more I read, the more I wanted to share Sanford’s story, rather than bury it in some safe place for another 119 years. The basic story line is true and the hi ...continued...

SLICK MOSS COVERED ROCKS A 24 MILE JACKS FORK FLOATING AND CANOE DRAGGING RIVER TRIP It would be IMPOSSIBLE to describe the (grueling) 24 mile (4) day float trip on the Jacks Fork River in the Missouri Ozarks that my guide Mike Overmyer and I endured thinking that around every bend in the river us having to get out of the canoe and drag it over slick moss covered rocks through shallow water as we stumbled along at the pace of a couple injured water buffalo. Periodically I looked down river where the sunshine glistened on the shallow rippling water and s ...continued...

[These series of articles were written in 2005 and some appeared in the Kansas City Star] What was the best “con” of the twentieth century? My vote goes to the worldwide diamond trade. Debeers and friends, who consolidated the markets in the late nineteenth century, secured a monopoly of truly remarkable proportions. Who in the world today doesn’t know that a diamond is forever and is also a girl’s best friend? The “grass” trade in the United States may not be in the same league as the diamond monopoly, nor did it deliberately start out in it ...continued...

Orcs hate Elves with a passion. (from Lord of the Rings by J. R.R. Tolkien) “Home home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play” According to the Center for Biological Diversity, Wildlife Services, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has killed, through gassing, poisoning and strangulation by snare, 27 million native animals since 1996, including more than 1 million in 2014. The animals have included prairie dogs, gray wolves, mountain lions, black bears, foxes, coyotes and even bald eagles, and possibly a few domestic cats. ...continued...

Living so close to our school had a couple of advantages: I could go home for my lunch and in the evenings Tommy and l would squeeze through the railings and have a kick about in the playground. One evening we climbed onto the toilet roof to look for balls. I was busy trying to dislodge a tennis ball from the gutter when I heard loud knocking coming from the main building, I glanced over and saw the stern face of our headmistress, ...continued...

Kansas 1886 Jason Cahill sat in front of his stone fireplace on a bitter cold January night, a medical book in his hands. But every few minutes he would glance up at the clock on the mantel. A minute later he looked sideways at the front door. “What is taking so long?” he murmured. At almost the same time he had spoken these words, there was a loud rap on the door. Jason stood up quickly and unlocked it. Outside, a full moon at their backs, two tall men in ankle-length coats and Stetsons waited. Between them they carried something long and heavy, concealed in a canvas bag. ...continued...

Dragon Sword-Book 3 in The Battle Wizard Saga Chapter 1 Black magic smells like nothing else. Worse than the oily smoke of a rancid grease fire overlaid with a tang of decayed meat. Its evil wrapped around and layered the tongue like a thick paste of ashes and motor oil. Only Sig could smell it. A good extra sense since his job was hunting evil. Sig walked the middle of a narrow, cracked asphalt road bordered by a cornfield to the left. Cars and pickups lined both sides. A sharp steeple rose above the whitewashed wooden building on the right. Morning sun reflected from red and gold pa ...continued...

North Pole ...continued...

North Pole ...continued...

I'm disabled and live on a low monthly fixed income!Life has never been easy for me as it still isn't!I do the best i can with what little i have!In 2006 was the worst year of my life because i was thrown from the back of a truck and in the hospital for 3 months in a coma with several broke bones,punctured lungs,heart stopped twice,given 6 pints of blood,lip was ripped off and jaw crushed,i had to have reconstruction of my face!I had to learn to eat,walk,and talk again.Leaving the hospital i asked where my youngest brother was and was told that he was locked up facing a death penalty for murde ...continued...

By Chris Christodoulou &nb ...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...

Why does it go through my mind in slow motion? All the memories. Things that were kept tightly sealed ia my imaginary box and put away in my imaginery closet. Trying to keep busy in order not to think, not to remember. But it doesnt help. Dont´t get me wrong they are all not bad memories. Alot of them are good ones but for some reason the bad ones are easier to remember. On my way to work I thought I was running late but as usual i am on time. All my l ...continued...

~~In the Nighttime To the individual working in near darkness, the place felt like a basement at midnight, illuminated only by a dim light bulb at the top of the stairway. No. Better. It felt like a mortuary in the middle of the night, the perfectionist mortician preparing a corpse for a starring role at its own funeral. An undertaker is an artist, after all, who must exult in the unveiling of the handiwork—or creative artwork—as gawkers pass by the open casket. The lone figure’s grin appeared as grotesque as the thoughts in its wearer’s head, illuminated as it wa ...continued...