One of the best parts of our trip to BEA was the chance to visit with our friend, author and fellow book-blogger, Gerry Murak. His just-released book, Our Fathers Who Art in Heaven, presents a collection of stories and essays from around the world honoring the contributors' fathers.
Scroll through some of the posts on Gerry's blog and you'll get a feeling for the power his book has to inspire.
We take special pleasure in Gerry's success, because we introduced him to blogging as a business tool at one of our Business Blogging Boot Camps late last year -- though he has accomplished much of what you'll see there on his own. Since the first halting steps we helped him take, he's grown his blog into a tool for collecting contributions to the book and now turned it toward helping spread the word to share the book with as many poeple as possible.
His achievements with this book show what an author can do by understanding the networking aspect of blogging and using it to create and grow real relationships, online and off.
Way to go, Gerry!
I visited a very interesting site, they have a vast collection of books which have been categories and are presented to viewers in an easy-to-search format. You should check it out.
http://www.khichdee.com/category-catid-11-paraid-0.htm
Posted by: Donald | November 27, 2006 at 06:57 AM
Essays
by Al Garner
I’d like someone to post and/or market individually or collectively my essays at http://home.Lworld.net/~garner which fall into three groups.
1 LIBERAL MISTAKES - a book of 30k words
2 Misc. essays
3 How to pieces
1 LIBERAL DISASTERS
Chapter I ‘Education’
How Useful Was School? 550
Vouchers 230
How Useful Was College? 800
The far left and far right 740
Beware of Idealism 530
Social work in the past 500
Chapter II Oh, to save the world
A Baptism by fire
Living in Slums 2l70
Domestic version of the peace corps l9l0
B Reflections
How Not to Study a Gang banger 310
Liberal Psychobabble 340
Social Work Myths 570
Welfare Reform 250
The Homeless 640
Hazlitt on Poverty 470
Why Immigrants Pass the Poor 850
Advice to the Poor 840
D Independence
How to Kill a Care Home 900
Neighborhood Care Homes 740
Suicidal Friend 770
Chapter III Landlording
A Bad Neighborhood ll20
Living with Bums 9l5
Legal Nightmare over Rented Room 650
The creative life 450
Chapter IV The light goes on
A Liberal pitfalls
Liberal Myths l060
The Liberal Media l800
Social Classes and Liberals l320
Liberal Spin on Riots 7l0
Beware of Idealism 530
B Economics
Discovering Milton Friedman 600
Discovering Thomas Sowell 720
What the Free Market Wants 1120
Minimum Wage 800
Privatization 550
C Values
The Decline l750
Our Growing Self-pity 380
Appendix
Liberal and conservative positions 2500
Traditional Values 750
-------------------------------------------------- - - - ----
2 Misc Essays
1 Education
College Credit For This? 3 units for no effort ll0
Substitute Teaching – the pits 770
School in Poorest District Wasted Money 320
2 Human nature
Downward Mobility 780
One Traffic School - the pits 250
3 Mental health
Living With Mental Patients JOURNAL OF REALITY THERAPY l800
Parents of Mental Patients AM. MEDICAL NEWS 4/ll/86 l020
Let’s Shrink Mental Health
4 Values
American Characteristics 835
Gambling as a Cancer 470
Pyramid games - they lure the greedy. 400
Premarital Sex and Maturity 320
5 Other
‘Profes¬sionals’ - their failings 1140
Advice to immigrants 870
Americorps - idealistic 770
Beware of the hyper hostess 620
Expand the U.N. 250
In praise of homeowners associations 300
Japan bashing in ‘92 400
Joining a gym as a senior l500
Media pitfalls 600
Not in my neighborhood 245
Religious scandals of ‘87 400
Terrible car auction 500
To be young in New York 2200
Why not rate social programs 780
--------------------------------------- - - - - -
3 How to pieces
How to
Discipline l000
Looking for work 770
Lose weight 290
Plan for the senior years 860
Prepare for the passing of others 230
Rent rooms in your house 830 & l700
Save money ll00
Al Garner, laguna woods, ca 92637, [email protected] Lived in NY slums during SERPICO …… worked in welfare, child neglect, drug abuse, juvenile detention …… domestic version of the peace corps (VISTA) …… taught Eng. …… worked on Capitol Hill during Watergate …… started home for mental patients (living with them for two years) …… landlord since ‘78 … … retired … … write (as a hobby) on social issues.
Credits
A Bad Neighborhood ORG. COUNTY NEWS l0/9/87
A Close Look at Mental Patients JOURNAL OF REALITY THERAPY Spg '83
Downward Mobility ORG. COUNTY REGISTER 8/23/87
How to Kill a Care Home ORG. COUNTY REGISTER l2/9/86
Job Hunting Tips PROFILE Fall '80
" " " ORG. NETWORK '92
Liberal Myths CRITIQUE Oct '87
"Low-life" THE FREEMAN 7/90 and 8 newspapers
Minimum Wage SAN DIEGO UNION 7/5/89
My Year in the Domestic Peace Corps SANTA FE REPORTER 2/l0/88
Our Growing Self-pity ORG. COUNTY REGISTER l2/l4/88
Parents of Mental Patients AM. MEDICAL NEWS 4/ll/86
Slums and the Solution POLICE TIMES Sep '86
" " " " (revised) ORG. COUNTY REGISTER 4/l2/87
Substitute Teaching the Pits. ORG. COUNTY REGISTER 2/3/88
Advice to the Poor THE BLACK ORANGE 7/94
Posted by: al garner | July 24, 2005 at 07:38 PM
Yvonne and Tom,
This morning your post was better than a jolt of high test caffine.
Thank you for the kind words and references to the book but you left out a very imortant piece - I did not believe in blogs. Your Blogging Boot Camp was great and we had the book blog up in the afternoon of your Boot Camp but I saw it as one more thing to try and get done and just didn't have time for.
Two months after it was up, I was ready to bury it. Both of you provided the words of encouragement that gave me a second wind and turned me into a believer.
Thank you again for not giving up on me and my many questions. Not only do you have a great Blogging Boot Camp but your phone and email support is the best of any seminar I ever attended.
Hats off to you and all of your endeavors.
From one of your converts,
Gerry
Posted by: Gerry Murak | June 06, 2005 at 07:55 AM