Scotty's family owns a lodge near their silver mine in the Colorado Rockies. Summers at the lodge are idyllic for Scotty and his cousin Mickey. The grown-ups are dealing with the complications of business and adult dysfunction, but the boys are more interested in the complications of puberty, especially when Rosalind, the teenage daughter of family friends, is on hand. To read this quiet, rich evocation of adolescent watchfulness is to experience what it is like to be fourteen years old, waiting for something to happen, aware of everything but oblivious to as much of it as possible. Readers will be reminded of such modern masters as William Maxwell and John Updike.

Mary Stone and Ida Kahn were the first female Chinese doctors educated in Western medicine. Both women changed China forever. This story shares their lifelong contributions to the China of their day, and how patient by patient they ended ancient traditions by producing positive results. Binding feet fell from fashion, surgery became the best solution for tumors, and female medical education saved many lives. Both physicians were born in Kiukiang, now called Jiujiang, one of many pearls along the sometimes over-flowing Yangtze River. Both were entrusted to missionaries. Both children had something about them their parents saw as mystical. We all became blessed because they took a course of unprecedented action, covering more than half the globe, and spoke to a simple way of facing impossible odds to make a difference."

After discussing the importance of leadership, Dr. Crawford presents the three key strategies for building instructional capacity. Leadership: Leadership is important to the success of any endeavor in public education. Increase Applied Personnel Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities: Possessing knowledge, skill and ability are only the beginning to an increase in student learning and student achievement. The application piece must be nurtured. Improve the Curriculum Program and Supporting Aspects: Parts of the curriculum program should be given special attention by school and district leadership. Provide the Basic Medical, Social, and Emotional Support for Students: Students should be given the best opportunity to succeed in public education. When this occurs, it will benefit society as a whole.

Dr. Edgerton H. Hart was born in China to missionary parents, was educated in America and returned to China to head one of the hospitals his father, Virgil Hart built in Wuhu, on the Yangtze River. His medical skills were highly regarded by both the Chinese and foreigners. From Caroline Harts' personal journal, At last my preparation of years was rewarded, for I carried in my pocket a half-read letter that appointed me to China. That early afternoon in the spring of 1904 found me hurrying toward the operating rooms of Chicago's huge Cook County Hospital, at that time said to be the largest charity hospital in the world. A brief luncheon period and a rush day in surgery had allowed only a glance at the letter, but it was my uppermost thought as I scrubbed up, put on cap, mask and gown and entered the room where an operation was already under way. I moved silently to my station and after a few moments, the chief surgeon, alert always to the personnel and efficiency of his assistants, looked up. He said teasingly, "So the little red-headed missionary is here to help, looking for the entire world as if she had seen a vision. Just when and where are you going?"

The Story of Lushan is beautiful and reaches from the clouds to the rivers far below. Lushan Mountain has always been a resting place, inviting meditation, insight-fulness, and art. Life on Lushan Mountain has touched many hearts, and inspired greatness from the masters of all centuries. If more than 5000 years of mystical history inspire you to visit Lushan, when you arrive amongst the clouds, you will know you have arrived in Heaven. Mystery and romance still lives all over this mountain. Start your journey with these pages, and imagine living in a timeless country where your ancestry reaches back to the beginning of time. If you are a poet, artist, photographer, or just in love with possibility, Lushan will bless your dreams and imaginings. China is a journey.

Mary Stone and Ida Kahn were the first female Chinese doctors educated in Western medicine. Both women changed China forever. This story shares their lifelong contributions to the China of their day, and how patient by patient they ended ancient traditions by producing positive results. Binding feet fell from fashion, surgery became the best solution for tumors, and female medical education saved many lives. Both physicians were born in Kiukiang, now called Jiujiang, one of many pearls along the sometimes over-flowing Yangtze River. Both were "entrusted" to missionaries. Both children had something about them their parents saw as mystical. We all became blessed because they took a course of unprecedented action, covering more than half the globe, and spoke to a simple way of facing impossible odds to make a difference.

Dr. Edgerton H. Hart was born in China to missionary parents, was educated in America and returned to China to head one of the hospitals his father, Virgil Hart built in Wuhu, on the Yangtze River. His medical skills were highly regarded by both the Chinese and foreigners. From Caroline Harts' personal journal, At last my preparation of years was rewarded, for I carried in my pocket a half-read letter that appointed me to China. That early afternoon in the spring of 1904 found me hurrying toward the operating rooms of Chicago's huge Cook County Hospital, at that time said to be the largest charity hospital in the world. A brief luncheon period and a rush day in surgery had allowed only a glance at the letter, but it was my uppermost thought as I scrubbed up, put on cap, mask and gown and entered the room where an operation was already under way. I moved silently to my station and after a few moments, the chief surgeon, alert always to the personnel and efficiency of his assistants, looked up. He said teasingly, "So the little red-headed missionary is here to help, looking for the entire world as if she had seen a vision. Just when and where are you going?"

Cinquains: Volume I, is a children's book of poems. The poems are accompanied by illustrations that engage students in the learning process. This book has been prepared with two purposes in mind. First, the book provides a source of enjoyment for the reader. This is accomplished by using the cinquain poem format for communicating about various topics. There are various forms of cinquain poems. I have stuck fairly close to the Adelaide Crapsey process of writing cinquains. This is mainly in the use of the syllable count. Second, to provide an additional resource for anyone involved in the process of engaging learners. Whether the learners are in public education, private education, or business the engagement of the learner is a significant key to learner success in the learning process.

This rollicking ride through a single day in the ill-fated village of San Marcos will leave you reeling with laughter, even as you cringe at the misadventures of the hapless Porter Clapp and his pitiable wife, Steph; the jaundiced Onésimo Moro and his ever-watchful spouse, Isabel; and the rest of Crawford’s riotous cast. At this story’s beginning, a meeting notice from the state water agency, posted at the local store, seems to portend an imminent threat to the valley’s precious acequias. But perhaps more ominous—at least to the paranoid Clapp—is the possibility of the outside world meddling with the isolation, blissful or not, of this remote Hispanic plaza town. As the time of the meeting looms, we follow the characters through the day and become immersed in a place unnervingly familiar to anyone who has lived in Northern New Mexico. Crawford spares no one from his acerbic wit and skewering prose, yet there remains an unmistakable affection for the marvelously dysfunctional community and the very faults that he so eloquently parodies. As the tale unfolds, we dread the incipient threat from outside the valley less and begin to hope that something will deflect the downward spiral every character seems doomed to follow—but nothing anticipates or prepares us for the denouement that Crawford skillfully delivers, leaving us punch drunk with mirth.

The compelling personal story at the heart of the Netflix documentary, "Garlic Breath." Readers who care about preserving local businesses will appreciate this new book by writer and garlic farm owner Stanley Crawford. In the fall of 2014, Crawford questioned US tariff exemptions for the country’s largest importer of Chinese garlic. This set off a massive legal battle, pitting his small New Mexico farm against the importer and its international law firms. In this compelling account of his David-and-Goliath battle, now in its fifth year, Crawford describes his personal and farming life under a cloud of lawsuits and administrative skirmishes. The unusual case was of such interest that it became the subject of a Netflix documentary, “Garlic Breath,” in the six-part series Rotten, released in 2018.

In an age of contested values, Stanley Crawford's wry Seed offers a sardonic exploration of the meaning of "values." Curmudgeon Bill Starr's end-of-life decisions illuminate the values that rule his life and his heirs' and well as the material objects he and they perceive as having value. Seed is the story of Bill Starr's final days. Childless but with a lifetime's worth of possessions and a nearly infinite web of extended family, Bill endeavours to empty his house completely before he dies by summon ing distant relatives to claim their inheritance. Many of his letters go unanswered, but those who do appear show up only to find that their reward is often much less valuable than they might expect. What they get instead are Bill's memories, made vivid by each item from the past, memories that are more exotic and curious than the lives currently lived by his young relatives. Accompanied by his housekeeper, Ramona, and his handyman, Jonathan, Bill is a somewhat cantankerous, wildly intelligent, and often forgetful man who recalls and speaks to his passed wife, often thinking that she's not dead. His unwillingness to recognize what has happened to her and to give away his only possession of any value, a 1937 Pierce-Arrow automobile that they bought together, becomes the measure of his grief and of his love in this profoundly funny novel that faces death and love sincerely.

This book is like Stanley Crawfords floor. The floor began more than thirty years ago when Crawford moved his family to New Mexico after selling movie rights to his first novel. The history of their home-made house is written in the hand-plastered floor, patched and sealed over the years. At first a reminder of how little he and his wife knew about working with mud, the floor has become beautiful in the years since 1971. It embodies their lives, the ways things have changed and the ways things have stayed the same. A mud floor is perfectly sustainable, being infinitely repairable and finally recyclable.

Reflections in Mud, Crawfords essay about the floor, is one of the many pieces collected in this book about his life in northern New Mexico. The novelist who didnt know how to lay a mud floor is now a seasoned farmer, irrigator, and northern New Mexico villager, and the essays on these subjects that he has been writing since the 1980s continue the work he began in "Mayordomo" and "A Garlic Testament" as an articulator of values that are out of synch and out of scale with the suburban lives of most Americans in the twenty-first century. Whether he is writing about the river whose water irrigates his land, the plants and animals with which he lives, or the continuing struggle he and his neighbors must engage in if their small farms and farmers markets are to survive, Crawfords thoughtful, witty essays are the kinds of summing up that his fans have been cutting out of periodicals for years. Now that they are in book form we can all throw away the clippings, reread the essays, and give the book to friends who have yet to discover the pleasure of reading Stanley Crawford.

From his New Mexico mountain home, award-winning author Stanley Crawford writes about growing garlic and selling it. The book is a favourite not only for its assemblage of garlic and farming lore but for what it tells us about how to live a satisfying life. This beloved book, first published in 1992, is now available only from the University of New Mexico Press.