Anne Ryerson is a senior honor student who also loves to roller skate. Her skate club is called “Rollerland Skate”. One day, many children and teens are practicing diverse spins and jumps when their instructor, Kathy Schillings, informs them that roller skating should make the 2012 Summer Olympics as an Exhibition Sport. All the skaters are excited at this prospect. Lynn Harrington, Anne’s best friend, encourages her to compete, (something that Anne has never done before). She, like Joyce Eddies, a Senior-level competitor, believes that Anne has a natural gift for skating and that she should carry her abilities to the next level. However, Anne has a serious obstacle to her entering competition: her mother who considers herself to be an exceedingly prim and proper individual, ( as well as someone who knows all the answers about everything), is dead set against Anne’s entering any kind of a skating competition. Anne’s mother, (though not her father), objects strenuously. Her mother’s objection doesn’t disturb Anne very much. Skating Proficiency Tests, school work, and house work keep Anne sufficiently busy.

Light on the Path and Through the Gates of Gold is a treatise by Mabel Collins. It presents a set of guidelines for the attainment of a spiritual way of life, compiled from easter wisdom.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The ability to consistently make one's best possible decisions can be a major factor in achieving success in life. A systematic process for accomplishing this goal, along with relevant examples are described. In addition, important background material on goal setting, the nature of information, related aspects of human nature and key perspectives of time and space are discussed. Applying the process to forming rational opinions in such areas as religion and politics is also addressed. The semi-quantitative process that the author calls "Probabilistic Rationalism" is derived from more formal decision theory methodology routinely used by management in making crucial business decisions, especially in situation possessing a significant degree of uncertainty. Applying this useful technique to situations frequently encountered in every-day life can help achieve a "gold medal" in that most important game, "the game of life".

Most people in the United States have forgotten that tens of thousands of U.S. citizens migrated westward to California by way of Panama during the California Gold Rush. Decades before the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, this slender spit of land abruptly became the linchpin of the fastest route between New York City and San Francisco—a route that combined travel by ship to the east coast of Panama, an overland crossing to Panama City, and a final voyage by ship to California. In Path of Empire, Aims McGuinness presents a novel understanding of the intertwined histories of the California Gold Rush, the course of U.S. empire, and anti-imperialist politics in Latin America. Between 1848 and 1856, Panama saw the building, by a U.S. company, of the first transcontinental railroad in world history, the final abolition of slavery, the establishment of universal manhood suffrage, the foundation of an autonomous Panamanian state, and the first of what would become a long list of military interventions by the United States.Using documents found in Panamanian, Colombian, and U.S. archives, McGuinness reveals how U.S. imperial projects in Panama were integral to developments in California and the larger process of U.S. continental expansion. Path of Empire offers a model for the new transnational history by unbinding the gold rush from the confines of U.S. history as traditionally told and narrating that event as the history of Panama, a small place of global importance in the mid-1800s.