Elegant, exuberant, and idiosyncratic, Acting My Age is a memoir and meditation by one of America’s most playful and inventive writers. In the words of Mary Mackey (The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams), “in Acting My Age, Thomas Farber gives us an unflinching, luminous, cleverly conceived meditation on his own mortality as well as on the extinction of the coral reefs, snow leopards, dolphins, and, ultimately the human species. Couching his observations in a series of short, interconnected, almost-epigrammatic essays that read like prose poems, Farber creates a narrative style reminiscent of Joyce and Melville: oceanic in depth and all-encompassing in range.” Gerald Fleming (The Choreographer) calls Acting My Age “a praise song, an exultation in the beauties and brutalities of being human. Though Thomas Farber is wide-eyed at the miracle of our existence, his prose details both the collapse of species and ultimate trajectory of our aging bodies. This polymathic dive into a writer’s remaining time—into the life of the earth, the sea, and meaning itself—is no mere memoir, but an elegant, instructive page-after-page of language-love.” Robert Roper (Nabokov in America: On the Road to Lolita) adds: “Tom Farber is always good company, and his ‘late writings’ are more and more indispensable, full of comfort for the perplexed, rich in learning, humorous, masculine and tender, evoking large sensations and vast views; a reader thinks of Montaigne, Whitman, and other of the great truth-tellers, modest of tone, intimate in approach, friends bringing deep gifts.”

Act Your Age! A command in these or similar words was heard by most of us soon after we learned to walk and often heard repeated as we trekked our way through childhood. As adulthood arrived perhaps you, like the author, have occasionally heard again that early exhortation ringing softly in your ears, "Now, don't forget to act your age." The author presents stories from his life as a suburban Oklahoma boy, time-study engineer, financial analyst, safety engineer, police officer, father of four, grandfather of fourteen and pastor that provide an intimate, candid, lively and imaginative chronology from his youth up to the present day of his retirement in the panhandle of northern Idaho. Emotions run the gamut from the deep sadness and vacuum of tragic loss to the joyful and raucous laughter found only in families. Occasionally rational explanation eludes all efforts and he is forced to fall back on divine intervention. Many were the opportunities that seemed to say Act Your Age! In some he did. In some he didn't. You be the judge.

With society urging young teens to grow up quickly while parents stand by in horror, it is no wonder adolescents feel caught between the adult world and the childhood they must soon leave behind. Combining a fresh writing style with lessons from Scripture, associate minister Kevin Johnson helps young readers understand and accept the inevitable changes that come with growing up.

Win McFadden, now in his nineties, is an international senior track and field star who still participates in U.S. Masters and Senior Olympics competition. In You Dont Have to Act Your Age, he has written a book with a radical mission: to convince the many millions of people over the age of 65 that the remaining years of their lives can be healthy, joyful ones. He poses the following questions: Suppose that in our effort to be as healthy as we could possibly be, we engaged in a pursuit that also let us have funand that while having fun we became totally absorbed and therefore willingly disciplined in our efforts? Suppose further that because of our dedication and discipline, we were eventually rewarded by public recognition and tangible rewards? What if as our days sped by in this happy, rewarding, and disciplined existence, we also met large numbers of friends who were similarly healthy, dedicated, and interesting? And suppose that through the friends we made and the recognition we received we became able to be of service to other older people who needed help in bringing themselves to a condition of greater health and fitnessand therefore happiness. That would be true satisfaction of the highest order. He claims that his positive answers to these questions have been the result of his participating in Masters athletics and teaching physical fitness classes for older adults. In this second edition of You Dont Have to Act Your Age, McFadden has added tips for seniors on how to choose an exercise class that meets their needs, as well as advice for younger relatives of seniors who now live in convalescent facilities on how to encourage their loved ones to remain as physically fit as possible.

This is my true life story of surviving divorce and finding my real self. This is a book about new life; after twenty plus years of marriage, life as I knew it had ended. I share my pain, anger, grief, and the loss I felt and how over time as I crawled out of the abyss I had fallen into I was able to turn my life around discovering true joy, happiness, peace, and love. This presentation is a little different than what you may have seen before; as I use poetry and humor as well as narrative to tell my story. Youll see the coping tools Ive learned and put to use. I hope through telling my story you can see the humor and absurdity to some of the situations Ive been through and maybe my perspective will help you as well.

Used in tandem with Acting the Song: Performance for the Musical Theatre, this Student Companion Ebook guides students through three semesters (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) of musical theatre song study. It answers the many questions students using this method may have, including some that they may be reluctant to ask—about fear, handling criticism, understanding their type, dealing with bad auditions, and the best use of social media, among others. Worksheets completed by real-life students can be used as models of best practice and will serve to inspire students to dig deeply and explore their own thoughts about the songs. Teachers using Acting the Song will find this ebook companion indispensable, and students will come to class more prepared, ready to work, and more open to learning.

Actor Anthony James has played killers, psychopaths, and other twisted characters throughout his Hollywood career. In the summer of 1967, James made his motion picture debut as the murderer in the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, In the Heat of the Night. His role in the 1992 Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Unforgiven, culminated a unique, twenty-eight-year career. Behind his menacing and memorable face, however, is a thoughtful, gentle man, one who muses deeply on the nature of art and creativity and on the family ties that have sustained him. James's Acting My Face renders Hollywood through the eyes and experience of an established character actor. James appeared on screen with such legendary stars as Clint Eastwood, Bette Davis, Gene Hackman, and Sidney Poitier, and in such classic television shows as Gunsmoke, The Big Valley, Starsky and Hutch, Charlie's Angels, and The A-Team. Yet, it is his mother's heroic story that captures his imagination. In an odyssey which in 1940 took her and her newly wedded husband from Greece to a small southern town in America where she bore her only child, James's mother suffered the early death of her husband when James was only eight years old. In the blink of an eye, she went from grand hostess of her husband's lavish parties to hotel maid. But like the lioness she was, she fought with great ferocity and outrageous will in her relentless devotion to James's future. And so it was, that on an August morning in 1960, eighteen-year-old James and his mother took a train from South Carolina three thousand miles to Hollywood, California, to realize his dream of an acting career. They possessed only two hundred dollars, their courage, and an astonishing degree of naiveté. After his retirement in 1994, James and his mother moved to Arlington, Massachusetts, where he concentrated on his painting and poetry. His mother died in 2008 at the age of ninety-four, still a lioness protecting her beloved son. Acting My Face is an unusual memoir, one that explores the true nature of a working life in Hollywood and how aspirations and personal devotion are forged into a career.