After The Rain

When congratulating my granddaughter on receiving her Masters in Fine Arts degree, I acknowledged my desire to be able to write poetry. Her simple answer was "give it a try." I finished my first poem at age 86. Since then, I have completed over 100 poems. A poet I will never be, however, a writer of poems I can claim. Although saddled with imperfections, my hope is that some spiritual benefit will be derived from the reading of this little book. The beautiful poem "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer was put to music and performed frequently by my father in my youth. The sound of his voice still lingers in my mind. The last line of the poem expresses my feelings. "Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.".

They were brothers and they knew each other better than they had ever known anybody, and when you are like this you can sit in silence and not speak and it is the most comfortable thing in the world. But fate can fracture even the strongest of friendships. In the lush green countryside of Vermont, Charlie has built a life for himself. He is happy enough running the small family restaurant and his only regret is the absence of his brother, Owen. Once close, Owen and Charlie have not seen each other for many years - the ties of brotherhood torn apart by their father's legacy - and a trail of postcards is all that is left. Charlie's is a solitary existence until he hires Claire to assist him in the restaurant and suddenly life feels complete. In Claire, Charlie feels he has found his reason for living. But when Owen returns it seems that the past is destined to threaten both brothers' future....

This book details the journey of one family's survival after one of the most devastating and destructive natural disasters in this country's history. Erin Akey, her three sons aged 13, 9, and 5, and her mother set out to seek safety as Hurricane Katrina approached their home in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Erin was a divorced, single mother who had to find a way for her family to survive as they fled the storm, found out that all that was left of their home and possessions was the slab of concrete and nothing else. She had to learn how to navigate the governmental bureaucracies to get help for them to survive, followed by her home insurance company trying any and everything to avoid honoring their commitment to their policyholders, and securing a safe place for them to live during these trying times. The reader is caught up in her trials and tribulations as they journey with her in her efforts to resolve the seemingly insurmountable obstacles she faced. However, this is not just a story of desperation but also of conquest. Despite the misery and heartache, Erin's story has a wonderful and exciting conclusion and the anticipation of a wonderful future filled with happiness and service to those who find themselves in circumstances similar to those she and her family faced. It is a story of courage in the face of adversity, faith, and the willingness to accept the good things God gives us, thank Him, and go forward, in His name, to help others..

As winter deepens, Yui works up the courage to give Yoshizawa her hand-knit scarf. The staff of Garden ring in the new year together, and January begins with new-fallen snow. Alone in his apartment, Kondo’s pen glides along manuscript paper. Akira heads out, hand-made scarf and umbrella in hand. “I’m sure it’ll clear up soon.” So many seasons have passed since the day Akira and Kondo met. In this final volume, what will the two of them write in the clearing sky...?.

Akira Tachibana. 17 years old, high school junior. Akira, awkward when it comes to expressing her feelings, finds herself secretly falling for the manager of the family restaurant where she works, one Masami Kondo, age 45. The curtain rises on the small love story that begins to unfold between Akira, stuck standing on the crossroads of adolescence, and Kondo, at the turning point of his own life….

Basis of the popular anime series, After the Rain is a story about friendship and rediscovering your passion. Selected as one of “The Best Manga of 2018” by Comics Beat. Kondo starts to feel a slight something towards Akira, but his expression turns stern and pained. Akira is perplexed by this change in him. Meanwhile, Yui works up the courage to tell Yoshizawa how she feels….

17-year-old high school student Akira Tachibana is a girl who barely expresses herself. She harbors a secret crush on Masami Kondō, a 45-year-old manager of the restaurant she works at part-time. “Tachibana… What are you doing here?” The blunt question, even though it was asked innocently, shakes Akira’s heart. As Christmas draws closer, Akira resolves to do a certain something for Kondo, and Yui, Yoshizawa and Kase grapple with secret feelings of their own….

Akira’s feelings toward her boss grow more intense, and Kondo, in the face of such unwavering attention, finds that emotions he thought he’d lost long ago are welling up once again, and he meets up with an old college classmate. Meanwhile, Akira clashes with her best friend Kiyan, as she feels the distance between them has grown too much. And so the summer of Akira’s 17th year passes by….

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Turn on the radio or take the time to flip through the stacks of used CDs at your local Goodwill or thrift store. Google ?rock ?n? roll music, ? even. Better yet, visit any public place that plays popular music from the last 50 years or so as the soundtrack to your Saturday afternoon grocery-shopping, clothes-buying or indie record store-scouting experience and you?ll find that no matter where you go, there's an ever-enduring presence that since the late 1960s has been a mainstay in the world of pop culture and popular music: a former blues band turned rock ?n? roll atom bomb called Fleetwood Mac. Though much of the band's popularity stems from their work in the late seventies and eighties, from an era when gas was 50 cents a gallon and singers were their own songwriters, there's a reason why the band has been able to maintain their status as rock ?n? roll royalty even more than 50 years after making their debut as a London-based blues group. His name is Lindsey Buckingham..

Stop the Rain Dance presents a unique view of life to attain greater happiness and offers proven tools to end the cycles of chronic failure. A truly inspiring book and a must read for anyone seeking self help in their relationships, health or finances. It is easy to become so involved in lifes drama and to lose sight of what's really important to us. This is your chance to take a step back and renegotiate your position. Dr. Stagls goal is to offer you another way to look at your life situation, take advantage of proven methods to help you resolve some of the challenges you face and then, put it all together in an easy to understand, workable fashion for a consistently more joyful experience. Its your choice. You create your life every moment of every day. With the right frame of mind and the right tools, the possibilities are endless..

Two Sparrows, a farthing-anthology(50). AiyeKo-ooto, let's pick straws. Farthing is 4 parts of an old penny. Which buys little except laborer's day wage, in imperial dark days when monarchs took the score. It's the least possible amount to pay for anyone, thing or thought. Hence colloquial expression -"I don't give a farthing...blah" The poems are letters to departed lovers. Obviously laced in disparaging thoughts (towards who left one behind); to love and lovers. Though while accepting the loss and, admitting some blame, remembering what they had; couldn't be excluded. If you've neither experienced; conflict with a lover or had one snatched from you by death, then count yourself lucky. For the rest of us lived in the straits. Often, unsure, which lakes to fish. We felt the worth of a farthing, like ewes taken by wolves, hanging on the dials, in hallowing midday silence while we lived on the fools' ship of love. ""I sent out my bird to a field of olives green, it took flight, soaring high, but never returns"".

The school of thought surrounding the urban ecosystem has increasingly become in vogue among researchers worldwide. Since half of the world’s population lives in cities, urban ecosystem services have become essential to human health and wellbeing. Rapid urban growth has forced sustainable urban developers to rethink important steps by updating and, to some degree, recreating the human–ecosystem service linkage. Assessing, as well as estimating the losses of ecosystem services can denote the essential effects of urbanization and increasingly indicate where cities fall short. This book contains 13 thoroughly refereed contributions published within the Special Issue “Urban Ecosystem Services”. The book addresses topics such as nature-based solutions, green space planning, green infrastructure, rain gardens, climate change, and more. The contributions highlight new findings for landscape architects, urban planners, and policymakers. Important future cities research is considered by looking at the system connectivity between the social and ecological sphere—via varying forms of urban planning, management, and governance. The book is supported by methods and models that utilize an urban sustainability and ecosystem service-centric focus by adding knowledge-base and real-world solutions into the urbanization phenomenon..

For nearly half a century, Jared Carter has been quietly mapping the American heartland. Line by line, his poetry has shown us the landscape, sounded the voices, conjured the music, and tested the silence of the ever-changing and yet ever-constant Midwest that figures so prominently in the American story. And yet what we find in Carter’s poetry is endlessly new. Here, in poems selected from his first five books, is the summer-long buzz of the cicada and the crack of the cue ball, the young rebel on his big Harley, and the YMCA secretary who backstrokes her way across the indoor pool. Here, too, are thirty new poems in fixed form that illustrate Carter’s continued quest for a poetry of “universal interest.” Taken together, these selections are, truly, poetry in the American grain..

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A collection of short poems, mainly on themes suggested by the natural world..

"This book consists of one hundred and nine selected papers presented at the 2015 International Conference on Materials Engineering and Environmental Science (MEES2015), which was successfully held in Wuhan, China during September 25-27, 2015. All papers selected for this proceedings were subjected to a rigorous peer-review process by at least two independent peers. The papers were selected based on innovation, organization, and quality of presentation. The MEES2015 covered a wide spectrum of research topics, ranging from fundamental studies, technical innovations, to industrial applications in Chemical Material and Chemical Processing Technology, Composite Materials, Alloy Materials and Metal Materials, Characteristics of Materials, Building Material and Construction Technology, Ecology and Environment, Technology for Environmental Protection, Economy and Environment, Mechanical and Control Engineering, and Manufacturing Technology. The MEES2015 brought together more than one hundred researchers from China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia, and provided them with a forum to share, exchange and discuss new scientific development and future directions of Materials Engineering and Environmental Science."--Provided by publisher.