MSI Press Blog

  excerpt from  Diary of an RVer during Quarantine  (MacDonald) -  Day 2 - 6 (Wednesday - Monday) It didn’t take me long to come up with a list of jobs that were long overdue.  Washing and waxing the truck and trailer pretty much got me through the first week.  Each day, I congratulated myself for a job-well-done with a “Quarantini” … which tastes just like a martini except that you drink it at home alone!  And you don’t even have to wait for Happy Hour – when you’re confined in a trailer, you can be happy at 11:00 in the morning!  As they say in the RV world:  it’s 5 o’clock somewhere!   5 stars, Readers' Favorite For more posts about award-winning author, Larry MacDonald, and his books, click  HERE . Read more posts about the Larry and his books, click  HERE . AWARD FOR  RV OOPSIES Kops-Fetherling International Book Award for Sports and Recreation AWARD FOR  TRAVELS WITH ELLY American Bookfest Best Books Award Fin...

  excerpt from  Damascus amid the War  (M. Imady) --     Pre-war Poems 11-20 11. Mending With gold and silver threads, my dreams I mend. Patch up the grey thoughts, then embellish them with bright hopes. ***        12.  The Field of Hope In the field of my mind, I weeded out the fears, sowed seeds of hope, then watered them with tears of joy. ***   13.  The Mask The sad look faded out. The pale mask shriveled and shrunk. Then, suddenly, it dropped. Undisguised, fingers danced upon the bare flesh with grace. Lips twisted and curled. Then, cautiously, drew a happy face! ***   14. The Shadow A laugh! A carefree laugh rang in my ear. Arms excitedly flapped in the air. Feet danced – lively – down the street. Gazing at the reflected figure -on the pavement – to my surprise I realized it was me! *** 15.  How How hard must I try to break through the iron bars? How far must I go To reach a silver star? How mad s...

  Excerpt from  Creative Aging  (Vassiliadis & Romer) - How to Age with Panache   For years I’ve admired the women wearing beautiful scarves, twisted expertly enough to look like they’d just tossed the scarf over their shoulders with a casual knot slipped in front. These women possessed an air of assured confidence that I didn’t feel belonged to me. Whenever I put on a scarf, it felt presumptuous. Who did I think I was? I didn’t belong to this fearless group.   Some of these feelings may have manifested because I didn’t start my work life in an office setting where the appropriate attire was business formal. None of my relatives dressed that way, either. Somehow, whenever I tried wearing a scarf in the mode de jour , it didn’t feel right.   As I’ve aged, though, I’ve grown more comfortable in my own skin. Life marches on, and it’s easier now to let self-doubt and criticism roll off my shoulders and into the if-they-feel-that-way-it’s-their-problem-not-m...

  Today's excerpt comes from  Communicative Focus  by Boris Shekhtman and Dina Kupchanka -  The Communicative Focus          We call the correlation between ideational and mechanical planes of speech Communicative Focus (CF). This term was introduced by Betty Lou Leaver and Boris Shekhtman (2002) in the book Developing Professional-Level Language Proficiency . CF convincingly reveals the communicative essence of a person's speech and shows that communicative quality of speech, first of all, depends on how automatic this person is in expressing his or her ideas.     This correlation may have different modes. The ideational and mechanical planes may coincide with each other, which makes CF completely automatic, and this coincidence means that ideational plan has enough controlled mechanical elements to express itself. The ideational plane and mechanical planes may not coincide with each other to this or that de...