What is it about freezing cold water that draws people in? Throughout history, humans have gravitated to cold water swimming and celebrated its healing properties, calling it the secret to good health and serenity. Today, cold water swimmers gather in groups from Galway to Georgian Bay to jump into frigid waters for fun, competition, and even as a form of activism and protest. Kathleen McDonnell started swimming in Lake Ontario, infamous for its chilly depths, because it was close to home. As time went on she began to rely on a daily dip, even breaking through winter ice to raise her spirits and refresh her body. In this wide-ranging memoir, McDonnell shares her love of cold water swimming and the lessons she has learned from a slow and steady commitment to the waves.

The true story of Emily Eaton. Born with severe cerebral palsy, Emily and her family had to fight for her right to go to school with non-disabled children in a regular classroom. Their fight, which began at a time when children with CP were segregated, was groundbreaking. Unwilling to take no for an answer, Emily's fight would take her all the way to the Supreme Court. Eventually victorious, Emily's story makes her an amazing role model for children everywhere - whether they are living with a disability or not.

Strange Attractors is a collection of approximately 150 poems with strong links to mathematics in content, form, or imagery. The common theme is love, and the editors draw from its various manifestations-romantic love, spiritual love, humorous love, love between parents and children, mathematicians in love, love of mathematics. The poets include li

“An authentic page turner…. Rogers [vividly] captures this era of Elvis records and small-town Maine fishing life.” —Down East In 1963, twelve-year-old Florine Gilham enjoys an idyllic childhood in small-town Maine—until her beloved mother vanishes. Untethered and adrift in the wake of her disappearance, Florine finds her once-cherished joys—watching her father’s lobster boat come into port, baking bread with her grandmother, and causing mischief with the summer folk—suddenly ring hollow. When a figure from her father’s past comes calling, Florine must find the courage to lay down roots of her own. Set against the gorgeous backdrop of the Maine coast, Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea is an extraordinary snapshot of a bygone America as seen through the eyes of an iconic New England girl.

Dani was born with her heart on the wrong side of her body. In her fifteen years of life, she's had more doctor's appointments, X-rays, and tests, and eaten more green hospital Jell-O than she cares to think about. Fourteen-year-old Amanda is a competitive gymnast, her body a small package of sleek muscles, in perfect health. The two girls don't know each other, don't go to the same school, don't have any friends in common. But their lives are about to collide. Acclaimed author Jill Wolfson tackles this fascinating story with her trademark honesty and wit.

Most people today are aging too rapidly and are dying from illnesses that could be prevented! Judy Lindberg McFarland wants to help readers prevent all the degenerative diseases and illnesses that accompany aging and the heartaches resulting from the loss of one's health.In Aging Without Growing Old, men and women of all ages will find out how to become healthy through natural and nutritional means. They'll learn how to enjoy greater health no matter how old they are and how to slow the aging process down to a crawl. It is possible to start defying your age with the essential information found in this book!

Michael Pollan calls her one of his food heroes. Barbara Kingsolver credits her with shaping the history and politics of food in the United States. And countless others who have vied for a food revolution, pushed organics, and reawakened Americans to growing their own food and eating locally consider her both teacher and muse.Joan Gussow has influenced thousands through her books, This Organic Life and The Feeding Web, her lectures, and the simple fact that she lives what she preaches. Now in her eighties, she stops once more to pass along some wisdom-surprising, inspiring, and controversial-via the pen. Gussow's memoir Growing, Older begins when she loses her husband of 40 years to cancer and, two weeks later, finds herself skipping down the street-much to her alarm. Why wasn't she grieving in all the normal ways? With humor and wit, she explains how she stopped worrying about why she was smiling and went on worrying, instead, and as she always has, about the possibility that the world around her was headed off a cliff. But hers is not a tale, or message, of gloom. Rather it is an affirmation of a life's work-and work in general. Lacking a partner's assistance, Gussow continued the hard labor of growing her own year-round diet. She dealt single-handedly with a rising tidal river that regularly drowned her garden, with muskrat interlopers, broken appliances, bodily decay, and river trash-all the while bucking popular notions of how "an elderly widowed woman" ought to behave. Scattered throughout are urgent suggestions about what growing older on a changing planet will call on all of us to do: learn self-reliance and self-restraint, yield graciously if not always happily to necessity, and-since there is no other choice-come to terms with the insistencies of the natural world. Gussow delivers another literary gem-one that women curious about aging, gardeners curious about contending with increasingly intense weather, or environmentalists curious about the future will embrace.