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  Improbable Possibilities - An...

  Linda E. Rawlings

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  Observe Possibilities. 
  Entangle Possibilities. 
  Create Possibilities. 
  Throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. 
  Several years ago, I was approached by Carolyn Wyman, author of “The Great American Chocolate Chip Cookie Book” to write a book about Otis Spunkmeyer Cookies.  I am co-founder of Otis Spunkmeyer Cookies with my husband, but no one starts a company alone.  I told her that Otis Spunkmeyer was about many things besides cookies, and I wrote stories to prove it.  Carolyn agreed, indicating my most fascinating stories had nothing to do with cookies.  She suggested I compile my “you can’t make this up” stories of improbable possibilities.  
  My entrepreneurial stories are of Robert C. Brown and Company, investment advisors, and Otis Spunkmeyer Cookies and Burritos.  Triple 888 Manufacturing, the sheet metal company that created the oven to bake Otis Spunkmeyer cookies.  Sentimental Journeys, the DC3 airline that promoted Otis Spunkmeyer.  New Shoes, Old Souls Dance Company, Yoga Garden Dancers, Heterodoxy Magazine, and George Magazine.  Yes, I did meet with John F. Kennedy Jr., to incubate George.  I also took Joe DiMaggio to Las Vegas and Van Morrison sang “Moondance” to me.  Albert Einstein is one of my heroes.  I have daughters.  These narratives are a memorialization of my improbable possibilities.  My spaghetti-walling spirit propagated waves. 
  The most powerful quantum computers can’t negotiate infinite waves of possibilities.  Artificial intelligence generates probable possibilities.  Human intelligence imagines improbable possibilities.  Artificial intelligence exists on codes and algorithms.  Human intelligence is nurtured by thinking with thoughtfulness.  It actualizes imagination, and spaghetti-walls improbable possibilities. 
  This is not a treatise on mindfulness.  It is not an AI bashing, or a self-help book.  Primarily, I am spaghetti-walling this book to entertain you.  I’ve been determined to make waves.

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  There Is No Blue

  Martha Baillie

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  WINNER OF THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 
  THE GLOBE AND MAIL: BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2023 
  THE GLOBE AND MAIL BEST 100 BOOKS OF 2023 
  CBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN NONFICTION OF 2023 
  Martha Baillie’s richly layered response to her mother’s passing, her father's life, and her sister’s suicide is an exploration of how the body, the rooms we inhabit, and our languages offer the psyche a home, if only for a time.  
  Three essays, three deaths. The first is the death of the author’s mother, a protracted disappearance, leaving space for thoughtfulness and ritual: the washing of her body, the making of a death mask. The second considers the author’s father, his remoteness, his charm, a lacuna at the centre of the family even before his death, earlier than her mother’s. And then, the shocking death of the author’s sister, a visual artist and writer living with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, who writes three reasons to die on her bedroom wall and then takes her life. 
  "Martha Baillie’s novels are thrillingly, joyously singular, that rare combination of sui generis and just plain generous. That There Is No Blue, her memoir, is all of those things too, is no surprise; still, she has gone somewhere extraordinary. This triptych of essays, which exquisitely unfolds the “disobedient tale” of the lives and deaths of her mother, her father, and her sister, is a meditation on the mystery and wonder of grief and art making and home and memory itself. It made me think of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repair, in which the mending is not hidden but featured and beautifully illuminated. Baillie’s variety of attention, carved out of language, is tenderness, is love." – Maud Casey, author of City of Incurable Women 
  "This is a stunning memoir, intense and meticulous in its observations of family life. Baillie subtly interrogates and conveys the devastating mistranslations that take place in childhood, the antagonism and porousness of siblings,  and the tragedy of schizophrenia as it unfolds.  I couldn’t put it down." – Dr. Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad and Everyday Madness 
  "Exquisite." – Souvankham Thammavongsa, author of How to Pronounce Knife 
  "I am grateful for this profound meditation on family and loss.” – Charlie Kaufman, filmmaker 
  "This strange, unsettling memoir of outer life and inner life and their bizarre twining captures the author’s identity by way of her mother’s death, her sister’s failing battle with mental illness, and the mysterious figure of her father.  It combines anguished guilt, deep tenderness, and bemused affection in highly evocative, often disturbing prose.  Its brave honesty is amplified by a persistent lyricism; its undercurrent of fear is uplifted by a surprising, resilient hopefulness.  It is both a plea for exoneration and an act of exoneration, an authentic meditation on the terrible difficulty of being human." – Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

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  RMS Titanic Lifeboat No 6 - The...

  William Cavendish

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  Tyrell and Julia booked to travel on the Titanic with their two sons to introduce them to their American grandfather, but the children were too ill to travel. Julia persisted in going without them. The fatal and tragic decision not only led to the unnecessary loss of her husband, it was to haunt her for the next fifty years. Why was she so determined to go? In a letter written to her sons, as her death approached, she claimed the purpose of the visit was 'to gain her wealthy father's support for his son-in-law's ambition to stand as a Member of Parliament.' Yet Tyrell had shown no enthusiasm for making the journey, as Julia had already made the trip alone, the previous year quite safely. From the Carpathia Julia cabled her father, Henry Siegel, to have clothes from his department stores ready for the Titanic's survivors. In 1992 and 2002 her son and grandson learnt from chance encounters with New Yorkers of Julia's father's shocking fall from grace, the grandfather who owned a famous department store with a 'soda fountain meeting place'. Now can be revealed the true reason for her mission.

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  Marilyn Monroe - Her Life Career...

  Kelly Mass

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  Marilyn Monroe has been part of the sexual revolution during the mid-20th century. Her influence in the movie industry, as an icon for attractiveness and femininity, have been noticed by hundreds of millions, even after her death. 
  Did Marilyn Monroe have success? Yes. Was her life easy? Not by far. Her failed marriages, early childhood trauma, mood disorder, and some of the struggles with her sexuality, contracts, and Hollywood producers have made her life go up and down so much that I’m sure she would describe some moments as the ultimate bliss and others as a living hell. 
  To understand such a complicated mess, a life covered in glamor and at the same time, tainted by manipulative individuals and her own weaknesses, addictions, and imperfections, we have to take a closer look. This way, we can understand why the world’s eyes were on her, and why she is still recognized as a symbol of attractiveness.

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  The Rise And Fall Of The...

  Jefferson Davis

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  Jefferson Davis was an American politician who served as the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He had previously served as the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857 under President Franklin Pierce. 
  Davis, the youngest of ten children, was born in Fairview, Kentucky to a moderately prosperous farmer couple. He grew up in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, and also lived in Louisiana. His eldest brother Joseph Emory Davis secured the younger Davis's appointment to the United States Military Academy. After graduating, Jefferson Davis served six years as a lieutenant in the United States Army. He fought in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848) as the colonel of a volunteer regiment. Before the American Civil War, he operated in Mississippi a large cotton plantation that his brother Joseph had given him, and owned as many as 113 slaves. Although Davis argued against secession in 1858, he believed the states had an unquestionable right to leave the Union. 
   
  During the American Civil War, Davis guided Confederate policy and served as its commander-in-chief. When the Confederacy was defeated in 1865, Davis was captured, accused of treason, and imprisoned at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. He was never tried and was released after two years. Davis's legacy is intertwined with his role as President of the Confederacy. Immediately after the war, he was often blamed for the Confederacy's loss. After he was released, he was seen as a man who suffered unjustly for his commitment to the South, becoming a hero of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy during Reconstruction. This is his story.

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  The Barber Astronaut and The...

  Barbara Radnofsky, Ed Supkis

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  In 1971, famed astronaut Alan Shepard returned from the moon and went to get a haircut. Before settling into the barber’s chair in Webster, Texas, near NASA’s Mission Control, Shepard gave his longtime barber and friend, Carlos Villagomez, an autographed golf ball. 
  During his Apollo 14 moonwalk, Shepard had conducted a world-famous demonstration of gravity by hitting a golf ball in an out-of-this-world sand trap. It took him two tries. 
  Carlos, a Navy combat veteran and barber for numerous astronauts, says Shepard gave him the ball immediately after he returned to earth and was released from quarantine. 
   ●     Had Shepard taken a third ball to the moon? 
  ●     Did he give it to his barber as a token of their long friendship? 
  ●     Is the ball one of the most significant pieces of sports memorabilia in history, or simply a gift of enduring friendship? 
  ●     Did the barber’s golf ball fly to the moon? 
  The debate provides a backdrop for The Barber, The Astronaut, and the Golf Ball, a story of two extraordinary men and their lasting friendship. The book is based on recollections of Carlos himself, the authors—both children of NASA scientists—as well as other astronauts, memorabilia experts, and family and friends of Shepard, who died in 1998.

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