Family Gems is set in 1976 and 1977. It consists of the written correspondence (including family recipes and small-town newspaper columns) between two middle-aged sisters, Jewell Mattingly Garrett of Buck Creek, Kentucky, and Ruby JaNelle Mattingly Clarkson of Falstaff, Arizona. Through their letters, other characters come alive: their siblings--level-headed and loving brother Garnett Greene Mattingly and drug-and-alcohol-addicted, widowed sister Opal Ovada Mattingly Skaggs; their spouses, children, grandchildren, and other extended family members. Many other eccentric characters from the community of Buck Creek, Kentucky also appear such as Teensie and Weensie Bottoms, fraternal twin sisters who co-own and operate the local beauty salon, along with Mr. Jerry Combs, a cross-dressing, homosexual hair dresser who rents a booth in the shop. During the course of their correspondence, a lifetime of family secrets--including one son's coming out and one daughter's interracial romance and unplanned pregnancy--are revealed and reviewed, always with compassion and with humor, both warmhearted and wicked.

This book provides a lucid introduction to the basics of gemmology. It familiarizes archaeologists, art historians and conservators with the science of gemstones and allows them to understand the basic concepts of their provenance, typology and treatments. Which are the main types of gems? What treatments can be applied? How does one analyse gems? How can gems contribute to archaeometrical research? This volume is written by four experts in the fields of gemmology and archaeometry and addresses both students who need an introduction to this field and professionals who want to refresh their knowledge of the topic. This work is part of a series of introductory texts that deal with a broad range of materials-related topics in archaeometry.

The support of Java Report by the pioneers of the language has always made it the source for Java development. From the very beginnings of Java, Java Report was there, examining each new aspect of the language with a clear independent eye. Now, Dwight Deugo, the editor of Java Report, has gathered the most important articles from the first year of the magazine. Written by a savvy Who's Who of industry experts, Java Gems covers today's most important aspects of Java development. Top writers and developers walk you through the topic areas that are essential to today's Java developers, including multitasking, design patterns, class libraries, persistence, distributed computing, and Java vs C++.