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Desert Walker - My Lucky Life
Denis Bartell OAM
My manuscript, Desert Walker, is a journey from my childhood through to my adult years. It is a true story of my many and varied exploits into the Australian Outback, interspersed with chapters of my personal life. I have walked remote deserts, boated and canoed mighty flooded rivers, conquered the outback in 4x4 wheel drive vehicles and a solar powered car, retraced the journeys of early explorerers and ridden camels across some of the harshest terrain in the world. The Press at various times have labelled me a contemporary Australian explorer, one of the quintessential characters of Australia's inland, an Australian adventurer and an outback legend. Some of my ventures were attempts to break records, others were undertaken to address personal problems, all were to reach higher goals and fulfill long held dreams, while two of my journeys raised considerable money for worthwhile causes. I have always had a great interest in and empathy with the early explorers. Having personally retraced the footsteps of many of these courageous men, their ventures have been woven into some of my own adventure stories. Although generally brief, it is hoped that readers will be encouraged to delve more deeply into their lives and our past history as a whole, both Aboriginal and European. In 1989 I was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) and The Australian Geographic magazine awarded me their Adventurer of the Year Gold Medallion. Over the years via the Press, TV and radio, I have tried to encourage the young to get out and experience our great outback and our heritage, to challenge life in general and to be participants of life and adventure, not just spectators. For the not so young and the middle aged, I have endeavoured by example to show that age is not a barrier, it is merely an excuse and that dreams and aspirations can become a reality if one is prepared to give it a go.
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Lady Windermere's Fan
Oscar Wilde
Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it bitingly satirizes the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage.The story concerns Lady Windermere, who discovers that her husband may be having an affair with another woman. She confronts her husband but he instead invites the other woman, Mrs Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere leaves her husband for another lover. Or does she? Is it really possible to trust delicious gossip? Are all men really bad? These and many other questions are raised and if not answered, then held up for public scrutiny in this biting satire of morals and proper behavior. The best known line of the play sums up the central theme:We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. —Lord Darlington (from Wikipedia and the reader)
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Teenage Resistance Fighter -...
Hubert Verneret
“A history book that reads like a novel, this testimony comes from one of the last living eyewitnesses” of the Nazi occupation of France (Christiane Amanpour, CNN Chief International Correspondent). September 5, 1944 The Americans are approaching; we follow their progress impatiently on the radio, by intercepting messages reserved for the commandos. They cannot be beaten now. But it is up to us to do the impossible to speed up the progression of the bulk of their troops, to facilitate the advance of their spearhead, and, above all, to prevent the Germans from withdrawing to the Rhine in good order, with all their equipment. How many human lives will we manage to save? Hubert Verneret was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy in Burgundy when the Nazis invaded Poland and fifteen when France fell. A Boy Scout, he helped refugees and the gendarmerie, moved wounded soldiers, and dug out bodies after air raids. Throughout, he kept a diary recording his actions, thoughts, and feelings as French troops retreated and Germans arrived. In 1944, at nineteen, he decided to join the local maquis resistance fighters, operating from a hidden base in the forest. Though constantly in danger, he found himself frustrated, as he felt fated never to fight the Germans directly, never to take a prisoner. As the Allies approached, the maquisards worked to upset and weaken the retreating Germans to aid the Allied advance. Hubert details the joy with which the maquisards were welcomed in local villages when the fighting ended. Only as he listened to the speech given as the maquisards disbanded did he understand that his part in the war, while perhaps not heroic as that played by others, was still important in gaining the victory. Years later, Hubert interviewed local maquisards to understand more about maquis history; their words and excerpts from the diary of a local civilian during the German retreat provide context to Hubert’s youthful testimony. This first English edition of Hubert’s diary retains the original prefaces by Col. Buckmaster, chief of the French section of the SOE, and Col. d’Escrienne, aide de camp to Gen. de Gaulle.
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50th Anniversary of the March on...
PBS NewsHour
Fifty years after the March on Washington, the vision of the civil rights movement has expanded beyond black and white, but what is left to be done? Gwen Ifill sits down with Peniel Joseph of Tufts University and filmmaker Bonnie Boswell Hamilton on how the goals of the March translate to the needs of today.
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From Darkness to Sight - A...
Ming Wang
From Darkness to Sight chronicles the remarkable life journey of Dr. Ming Wang, a world-renowned laser eye surgeon and philanthropist. As a teenager, Ming fought valiantly to escape one of history’s darkest eras – China’s Cultural Revolution – during which millions of innocent youth were deported to remote areas to face a life sentence of poverty and hard labor. Through his own tenacity and his parents’ tireless efforts to provide a chance of freedom for their son, Ming eventually made his way to America with $50 in his pocket and an American dream in his heart, where against all odds he would earn a PhD in laser physics and graduate magna cum laude with the highest honors from Harvard Medical School and MIT. He embraced his Christian faith and tackled one of the most important questions of our time – Are faith and science friends or foes? – which led to his invention of a breakthrough biotechnology to restore sight. To date, Dr. Wang has performed over 55,000 eye procedures and has treated patients from nearly every state in the U.S. and from over 55 countries worldwide. He is considered the “doctor’s doctor,” as he has operated on over 4,000 physicians. Dr. Wang has published 8 textbooks including a paper in the world-renowned journal Nature, holds several U.S. patents and performed the world’s first laser artificial cornea implantation. He is the recipient of the Honor Award from American Academy of Ophthalmology and the Lifetime Achievement Award from American Chinese Physician Association. Dr. Wang is currently the only surgeon in the state who performs 3D LASIK (18+), 3D Forever Young Lens Surgery (45+), 3D Laser KAMRA (45+), and 3D Laser Cataract Surgery (60+). Dr. Wang established a non-profit foundation which provides sight restoration surgeries for indigent patients who otherwise would never have the opportunity to receive them free-of-charge.
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The sacred history of solitude...
Khaled Hafdhi
Solitude offers us that other space of thinking, another modality where we can meet different ingredients of perfection. The author is letting his pen engrave what the fuel of the holy history of solitude may inspire, echoing as much lonesome voices from the past with a never ending thirst to offer the best in us.Solitude was there for us all the time long the human history but we tend to ignore it. Solus was there for us with a special complex effect inside everyone, with a confusion reflected in our language and reality, a conscious fact that we undergo even when we are not alone evolving many ambiguities: pain and serenity, escape and encounter, anxiety and meditation, refuge and curse and many more complex states.
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