MSI Press Blog

  excerpt from  Learning to Feel  (Kris Girrell) --  1 I Think I Feel “I still don’t think you’ve done the deep work on yourself,” Sarah told me. “What do you mean? I have gone to therapy and done tons of work to discover the source of it,” I defended. “But you haven’t uncovered the real issue, in my opinion,” she replied. “What were you feeling that caused you to do that?” Sarah has been my marriage partner and partner in life over the last thirty plus years and,  at the same time, the thorn in my side who won’t permit me to ignore or step over issues.  We were talking about a time in our marriage quite some time ago when I allowed myself  to fall into a sexually flirtatious email exchange with an old flame. It was a painful time  that was almost the undoing of our marriage. While I have journaled on it and gone to  therapy on it, all in the effort to discover what in me would allow or cause such an action,  her claim that there is stil...

  excerpt from  How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately  by Boris Shekhtman -  TO THE READER FROM THE AUTHOR The book which you, dear reader, have picked up was written approximately twenty years ago. However, the reasons that brought it to the light of day then remain as important today as ever. The first of these reasons is the survival of foreigners who are living entirely surrounded by native speakers of the foreign language. I came to the United States with a decent level of English, but, naturally, I did not feel myself to be on a par with Americans. I am certain that a great many people are suffering and have suffered from this feeling of “linguistic inferiority.” Some people come to accept this feeling. Others try to improve their foreign language. Still others--and I belong to this group--try to find a set of strategies to help them to use the language that they have acquired more effectively. Back then I had already begun to realize the s...

excerpt from  Diary of an RVer during Quarantine  (MacDonald) -  Day 8 (Wednesday?) I climb up on the roof to see why my ceiling-vent fan is not working when the vent opens.    Being afraid of heights, standing on an RV roof is not my forte; I get a little queasy standing in the back of my pickup truck.    So I crawl to the vent.    Here’s some advice:    don’t crawl on a white roof in blue jeans … unless you’re trying to make a fashion statement with white-kneed jeans.   Finally, I reach the vent and Sandy opens it from the inside control panel.    I notice a switch designed to open when the lid goes up is rusty.    A shot of WD-40 and a slight tug on the switch and the fan begins working again.    I also clean a layer of soot off the topside of the clear plastic fan.    That brilliant piece of work warranted another Quarantini.    In all my 35 years of RVing, I don’t recall dr...

  excerpt from Depression Anonymous  (Dennis Ortman) --  PERSISTENT DEPRESSIVE DISORDER Alice, a woman feeling cheated by life: “I’ve been jinxed. Nothing has ever gone right for me. It began in childhood. I was the fat kid everyone picked on. In high school, no boys ever wanted to date me. And then there’s my health. I’ve suffered from asthma my whole life and had several auto accidents in which I was severely injured. I tried to make up for all my failures by being good at my job. I became an extremely competent executive secretary, a perfectionist. I took pride in my work. Would you believe I was fired because I complained so much about problems in the company? I just wanted the business to succeed. Even now, I’m the one who has to take care of our elderly parents because my siblings don’t want to have anything to do with them. You’d think my parents would appreciate all my help, but they just take me for granted. I often stay awake at night thinking about all the unfa...