MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from  Forget the Goal, the Journey Counts  (Stites)  Absorbing the ‘20s! (2)      Around the middle of the 1920s some head-in-the-clouds guy (that’s what Dad called him) put out the slogan “Every Day in Every Way I am Getting Better and Better,” and for a number of years it seemed the whole country stood in front of the bathroom mirror every morning and repeated that saying over and over. Everybody got better and better, and so did the country until they all got so much better that on Tuesday, October 29th in 1929, they all collapsed with being so great. They called it Black Tuesday because a lot of rich people lost a lot of money. Not enough to make the rich people real poor, of course, just poor enough to make them cancel the par ties they had lined up through to New Year’s. But it made the middle-class folks really bad off and the poor people just about done in.  There are few people around who remember when it seemed that alm...

  Excerpt from  Forget the Goal, the Journey Counts  (Stites)  Absorbing the ‘20s!   I don’t remember much before I was six years old except that as a little kid I was happy in those bubbling days of the 1920s. It was called the Roaring Twenties, and everyone seemed to be doing just great. In the 1928 presidential election, the candidate Al Smith said he would see that the whole country had a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Things were that good! Calvin Coolidge had been president, and my dad said he was an all right president even if he didn’t say much. Dad said they called him Silent Cal, and that he wouldn’t run for another term because he had “had enough.” He never did say enough of what. So Hoover ran and won. Dad said it was because Democrat Al Smith was a Catholic and no Catholic could ever be elected president. Dad had Hoover and Smith buttons along with buttons and rib bons from presidential elections all the way back into th...

  MSI Press authors are located all over the world. Getting to know the authors can also mean getting to know a new part of the world. We will be sharing this information on a regular basis. Follow us and map our authors' locations. The late MSI Press author, Alfred Stites ( Forget the Goal, the Journey Counts ) , spent his retirement years in Costa Rica (lit. rich coast) before moving to New Mexico with his children in his 90th decade. After leaving Costa Rica, he wrote a book, Sidewalks in the Jungle , to tell others what Costa Rica is really like. Costa Rica was the point where the  Mesoamerican  and South American native cultures met. The northwest of the country, the Nicoya peninsula, was the southernmost point of  Nahuatl  cultural influence when the Spanish conquerors ( conquistadores ) came in the 16th century. The central and southern portions of the country had  Chibcha  influences. The Atlantic coast, meanwhile, was populated with African wo...

  The following is the story behind Forget the Goal, the Journey Counts (Stites) From the editor: Alfred's book was one of the first we published, nearly 20 years ago, by an author we did not personally know. (Since then, we have met lots of new people and made lots of new friends.) At the time, and until recently, Alfred was living in Costa Rica. In fact, he had written a book earlier about Costa Rica. We were used to working with foreign authors. In fact, we had already published books by authors from Syria and Jordan. We found Alfred's story fascinating -- 71 different jobs, and most of them contributed to who he was as a person. Some of those jobs were downright unique, and he had met some well-known people and a lot of unknown unique words. A fun read! Alfred lived into his 90s. Near the end of his life, he moved back to the USA to be with his children in New Mexico. Alfred may not still be with us, but we still have his book. So, Alfred is still entertaining readers. For...

  Today's fortune cookie is associated with Alfred Stites' books, Forget the Goal, the Journey Counts .  For more posts about Alfred and his book, click HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.  Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can!  Find their contact information on our  Authors' Pages .    

  Excerpt from Forget the Goal, the Journey Counts (Stites)  My Second Miracle   It was during this period of my life when I had the second of my automobile “experiences” with my new Volkswagen Hatchback. One night, around 11:00 p.m., I was driving home to Arlington from a party in D.C. I had had a few drinks, and for some reason I took a winding blacktop road through the residential section instead of the freeway, my usual route. At the top of a rise I saw a curve ahead, and realized I was driving too fast. I hit the brakes twice. The car suddenly fishtailed violently, and I lost control. As it went off the road to the right and up a slope, I gripped the bottom of the steering wheel, bowed my head, and closed my eyes. The car catapulted over a 10 foot embankment, rolled over, landed on the roof, and then rolled over again slamming into a bank. I must have been unconscious for a short time because when I opened my eyes, the road was lined with cars, and a ...