Bøger udgivet af Wellstone Press

The artworks in this book begin with a traditional portrait drawing or painting. Often, years pass before the initial piece is altered. At times, I irrevocably erase or paint out areas. In other instances, I resort to cutting up paintings or drawings in order to collage or create a new stand-alone piece. All this risk-taking is done in the hopes of creating something stronger and more authentic.This type of destruction of my original work feels not only perilous, but also limiting. Thus, I gratefully welcome using New Media prints, as prox-ies. At times, I feel it necessary to permanently alter the original piece, but for the most part I use New Media prints on paper or canvas. This allows me the freedom to experiment, fail, and push the boundaries of traditional portraiture. One approach is to utilize these printed portraits in conjunction with maps, diagrams, collage, and even dirt... This experimental modality might also transition into using high flow paint in partnership with the portrait. The high flow surfaces serve as a background or a direct pour across the por-trait itself. I also employ ready-made papers, which bring a new aesthetic to my work. I use these extraordinary papers as dynamic portrait backgrounds. Overall, in creating these new works, I fortunately am able to incorpo-rate the best of both worlds. I combine my "Old Master" egg tempera and oil painting technique with digital printing, collage, and high flow paint. I also merge my proclivity for realism and control with my pension for multiple in-terpretations and chance. My intention is for a synergy to occur between tradi-tion and experimentation, perhaps resulting in a fresh and unique perspective. In creating portraits, I am acutely aware of the many aspects of individ-uals-both overt and mysterious. Moods are in constant flux, and each of us is challenged by circumstance. My hope is that these portraits honor these many complexities, as they honor those I have been able to portray.My creative exploration and sensibility is the binding that holds these pages together-a story that has no plot, no conclusion, and is not linear.

Pedro Gomez of ESPN was a beloved figure in baseball. His death from sudden cardiac arrest on Feb. 7, 2021, unleashed an outpouring of heartfelt tributes. He was 58, both a hard-nosed reporter and a smiling ambassador of the sport. These 62 personal essays soar beyond sports to delve into life lessons.Pedro, a proud Cuban American, was known for his dramatic reporting from Havana. Fully and fluidly bilingual, he did as much as anyone to bridge the wide gap that had existed between U.S.-born players and the Latin Americans now so important to the game's vitality and future growth. He was also a family man who loved to talk about his three children, Sierra, Dante and Rio, a Boston Red Sox prospect.Pedro was universally known as a smiling presence who brought out the best in people. His humanity and generosity of spirit shaped countless lives, including one of his ESPN bosses, Rob King, who was so moved by Pedro's advice to him-"Remember who you are"-that he printed up the words and posted them on the wall of his office in Bristol. King is one of a diverse collection of contributors whose personal essays turn Pedro's shocking death into an occasion to reflect on the deeper truths of life we too often overlook. Part The Pride of Havana and part Tuesdays With Morrie, part The Tender Bar and part Ball Four, this is the rare essay collection that reads like a novel, full of achingly honest emotion and painful insights, a book about friendship, a book about standing for something, a book about joy and love.Former New York Times writer Jack Curry writes about Pedro's passion for live music, and former Sports Illustrated writer Tim Kurkjian brings alive spring-training basketball games with executives like Sandy Anderson and Billy Beane and Pedro right in the mix. Detroit manager AJ Hinch and formers Texas manager Ron Washington both reveal that in their darkest hours Pedro gave them some of the best advice of their lives.Hall of Famers Dennis Eckersley, Tony La Russa, Peter Gammons, Ross Newhan, Tracy Ringolsby and Dan Shaughnessy are among the contributors. So are likely future Hall of Famers Max Scherzer and Dusty Baker. Pulitzer-Prize-winning Washington Post war correspondent Steve Fainaru, award-winning writers from Howard Bryant and Mike Barnicle to Tim Keown, Ken Rosenthal and Dave Sheinin also contribute. Rounding out the mix are current and former ESPN stars including Rachel Nichols, Shelley M. Smith, Peter Gammons, Bob Ley and Keith Olbermann.This is a book to rekindle in any lapsed fan a love of going to the ballpark, but it's also a wakeup call that transcends sports. To any journalist, worn down by the demands of a punishing job, to anyone anywhere, pummeled by pandemic times and the dark mood of the country in recent years, these essays will light a spark to seize every opportunity to make a difference, in your work and in the lives of people who matter to you.

When the networks called the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden on Saturday, November 7, 2020, people from coast to coast exhaled-and danced in the streets. This quick-turnaround volume, a collection of 38 personal essays from writers all over the country-"many of America's most thoughtful voices," as Jon Meacham puts it on the back cover-captures the week Trump was voted out, a unique juncture in American life, and helps point toward a way forward to a nation less divided.An eclectic lineup of contributors-from Rosanna Arquette to Anthony Scaramucci-puts a year of transition into perspective, and summons the anxieties and hopes so many have for better times ahead. As award-winning columnist Mary C. Curtis writes in the lead essay, "Saying you're not interested in politics is dangerous because, like it or not, politics is interested in you." Novelist Christopher Buckley, a former speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, laments, "The Republican Senate, with one exception, has become a stay of ovine, lickspittle quislings, degenerate descendants of such giants as Everett Dirksen, Barry Goldwater, Howard Baker and John McCain." Nero Award-winning mystery novelist Stephen Mack Jones writes, to Donald Trump, "Remember: You live in my house. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is my house. My ancestors built it at a cost of blood, soul and labor. I pay my taxes every year to feed you, clothe you and your family and staff and fly you around the country and the world in my tricked-out private jet. If you violate any aspect of your four-year lease-any aspect-Lord Jesus so help me, I will do everything in my power to kick yo narrow ass to the curb."As Publisher Steve Kettmann writes in the Introduction: "The hope is that in putting out these glimpses so quickly, giving them an immediacy unusual in book publishing, we can help in the mourning for all that has been lost, help in the healing (of ourselves and of our country), and help in the pained effort, like moving limbs that have gone numb from inactivity, to give new life to our democracy. We stared into the abyss, tottered on the edge, and a record-setting surge of voting and activism delivered us from the very real threat of plunging into autocracy."

Imagine a mirror broken into dozens of pieces-each piece a poem that needs the others to be complete and whole again. The Book of Baruchio is such a mirror, and like any mirror it reflects back upon the one who looks into it. These touching and often humorous poems are a delight to read. They start in the heart, reach into the mind, and travel all the way up to the soul. I've had the privilege of witnessing many of the events that led to the creation of these poems. Reading them was a journey into my past, but at the deepest level this collection is a journey into each of our futures. -Rabbi David Zaslow, author of Thou Shalt Wander and, forthcoming, Jesus, First-Century Rabbi"

Winners are not born. They learned how. You can learn how, too.Winners don't have more stamina. They just have better ideas. They don't have higher IQs. They just have great strategy.People think that winning is meant to be hard. And, if they can't hack it, then they believe the good life is not meant for them.Rabbi Baars explains that the reality is quite the opposite: The really good life is easy. And when life is easy, life is good. Sports, business, food, friendships and family, are only truly enjoyed by those who have figured out how to make them easy. These are the winners.Most of us believe that motivation creates success, but in this book you'll learn that it's the other way around: It's knowing that you are going to succeed that creates motivation. Winners have learned how to make challenging goals easy, but easy doesn't mean lower. The trick is to take the goals you really want, and make THEM easy.Change your thinking, change your life. Change your destiny. It's that easy.And for it to work it has to be easy. Because, if it isn't easy, it won't work.This book will change your life, just by reading it.

The following excerpt from a prose poem in the collection best describe Jonah Bornstein's poems. "Describe the frantic air thrashing and flicking . . . the whistles and clicks of birds and insects, the agaves and cacti . . . the granite, aggregates, shale, slate-hold them in your palm close to your face, so close that when a breeze brushes the pollens and dust from your hand into the air, they enter you through your mouth, gritty and chalky . . . the smell of sweat mixing with it all; then you will understand you are a filter. What enters is the finest stuff and it will mix with you until histories and memories form an intricate web from which nothing is lost." - from "Prelude""Jonah Bornstein stands half in, half out of the world, his poems crackling with a physical tension, the way of things; his poems calling from some place so deep you reach for him, or he for you, and your clasp is hot with sorrow, joy, passion, and gratitude, that words save us again and again." -Sandra Scofield, National Book Award finalist; author of seven novels, including Beyond Deserving, Plain Seeing, and two memoirs"What better to fill a page's primordial emptiness than the impulse of the poet to somehow both speak of the world and be of the world? What better than being able '. . . to hold the world up and to lie down / in it'? Accomplishing such a duality is Jonah Bornstein's work in these lyric poems. His voice conveys the longing and sadness inherent in such a two-fold being, one intent on becoming '. . . the twilled heart of man / and sycamore / white / as bone.'" -Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate