The First-Year Urban High School Teacher: Holding the Torch, Lighting the Fire tracks co-author Paul Weinberg during his first year of teaching as he is introduced to the daily tribulations of an urban Los Angeles high school. Paul's father, Carl Weinberg, who fifty years earlier himself began his career in education as an urban secondary school teacher, shares his experiences side-by-side with those of his son. Together they reveal parallels between Carl's former problems in the urban classroom and the problems his son faces. Though some things have changed, there have not been nearly as many changes as one would have hoped. Interwoven with the father-son anecdotes of personal experience in teaching is a careful scholarly examination of the areas of social and cultural disorganization that the new teacher confronts with students, teachers, administrators, policy makers, and parents as he or she navigates through the behemoth of urban schooling.

The First-Year Urban High School Teacher: Holding the Torch, Lighting the Fire tracks co-author Paul Weinberg during his first year of teaching as he is introduced to the daily tribulations of an urban Los Angeles high school. Paul's father, Carl Weinberg, who fifty years earlier himself began his career in education as an urban secondary school teacher, shares his experiences side-by-side with those of his son. Together they reveal parallels between Carl's former problems in the urban classroom and the problems his son faces. Though some things have changed, there have not been nearly as many changes as one would have hoped. Interwoven with the father-son anecdotes of personal experience in teaching is a careful scholarly examination of the areas of social and cultural disorganization that the new teacher confronts with students, teachers, administrators, policy makers, and parents as he or she navigates through the behemoth of urban schooling.

SLO PITCH is a story about making peace with being a big fish in a small pond. MICKEY OBINSKI is an almost-forty-year-old baseball player who never made it to the majors but is now a superstar in a Slo Pitch industrial league softball team in Los Angeles. Mickey has never completely accepted the demotion of his dreams and now, into his frustrated life, enters his almost 20-year-old doppelganger with deep resentments of his own. His principal complaint is that Mickey submerged him 20 years earlier when he surrendered to an ordinary life as a family man and factory worker. The submersion worked for Mickey until he began to look his 40th birthday in the face. More formidable an antagonist than his ghostly younger self is Mickey's boss, ED BARKBEAN, the un-athletic owner and captain (due to his ownership of the factory) of the team whose quest for a championship borders on the pathological. The boss fires Mickey's buddy who's a good worker but a lousy second baseman, and replaces him with a ringer - Ed's daughter's super athletic surfer boyfriend. Mickey is recruited by Ed to help legitimize the firing to the union, which forces him to confront his own morality and the price he's willing to pay for the league championship and a small share of the factory. While primarily a comedy, SLO PITCH is also a serious story of a working class man's regrets juxtaposed against his disoriented ghost self and the fun and camaraderie of slo-pitch softball.

HARPOON pits a former American Lit Professor and Moby Dick scholar who romanticizes the 70's, against a beautiful woman raised in a rural commune who wants to make it in the "real world." After being fired from his academic position for hurling a harpoon at his students, DONALD ALCORN, now a 40-year-old book publisher living in Philadelphia, falls for GOLDEN ORLANDO, the 34-year-old author of a book he has reviewed for publication. Her book, about growing up in a Northern California commune, stirs Donald's fantasies of the 'free love" life he missed out on. Unfortunately, his editor-in-chief wants no part of a book about hippies, drugs, sex and rock & roll. Despite his boss's rejection, Donald offers Golden a quid pro quo. He'll help her get the book published if she gives him the 70's commune experience. They make a deal and what follows is love, sex, drugs, deception, betrayal, escape and a chase across the ocean and back with Donald, consumed by jealousy, sharpening his harpoons in wait for the surfacing of his great white whale.