Of the 15,000 nursing homes in the United States, how many are places you’d want to visit, much less live in? Now that people are living longer and more of the population are elderly, this question is more important than ever, particularly for people with disabilities. We must transform long-term care into an experience we and our loved ones can face without dread. It can be done. The Penelope Project shows how by taking readers on an ambitious journey to create a long-term care community that engages its residents in challenging, meaningful art-making. At Milwaukee’s Luther Manor, a team of artists from the University of Wisconsin’s theatre department and Sojourn Theatre Company, university students, staff, residents, and volunteers traded their bingo cards for copies of The Odyssey. They embarked on a two-year project to examine this ancient story from the perspective of the hero who never left home: Penelope, wife of Odysseus. Together, the team staged a play that engaged everyone and transcended the limits not just of old age and disability but also youth, institutional regulations, and disciplinary boundaries. Inviting readers to see through the eyes of residents, students, artists, staff, family members, and experts in the fields of education, long-term care, and civically engaged arts practice, this book underscores the essential role of the arts and humanities in living richly. Waiting, as Penelope waited, need not be a time of loss and neglect. The Penelope Project boldly dreams of how to make late life a time of growth and learning. If you dream of improving people’s lives through creative endeavors, this book provides practical advice.

In a world where news and entertainment are controlled by a single corporation, communication becomes a dangerous adventure. Truly Stimulating -Space Coast Press Echo's Voice has a fascinating premise for a science fiction novel and features some complex and intriguing world-building. . The plot is also well set up, with a hook that draws you into the complexities of the story and creates instant sympathy for its trapped heroine. -Scribes World Reviews The story will hook you completely . you will be fully involved in Rick and Echo's adventure. -The Bookdragon Reviews Echo's Voice is a tale of courage and dedication, of a young woman whose spirit refuses to succumb to the temptations of both the serpent and paradise, who accepts hardship with the same dauntless enthusiasm as she does pleasure. It is a warning to all of us not to allow ourselves to be lulled by the sweet voice of those who think they know best about what we should know and believe. -Inscriptions

Summary of Penelope Armed Penelope is a resident of a city-state that has survived 2000 years by remaining invisible to other races and military states of humankind. The people of this time and place have evolved into a species of post-human who are sexually colorated and polymorphously perverse. Their post-historical lives are paradisial, but they face the possibility of extinction because of the non-orgasmic nature of their sexual relationships. On a geological survey, Penelope and two associates are captured by Indians, who are descendants of people from an ancient country named Indiana. Penelope is married to a Hunter; then she wages a one-woman war against an army of Indians and has many strange adventures getting back to the city in the sky, only to discover after her return that she is no longer acceptable in paradise.

When the beautiful but impoverished Fenella Hawke takes up the position of Companion to the elderly Dowager Duchess of Wyndlesham, she is unprepared for the hostile attitude of the current Duke. The handsome and arrogant Devlin Deverell suspects Fenella has secrets to hide. From the moment they meet, Devlin and Fenella experience an overpowering and frightening attraction. They try to fight their growing arousal, but find themselves irresistibly drawn to each other. However, when Lady Penelope Vane, Devlin’s extremely jealous mistress, discovers that Devlin’s attentions are wandering, she sets in motion a ruthless plot to discredit Fenella, with the help of her ally, the rakish Sir Marcus Solesby. Can Fenella keep her secret from the dangerous Duke? Or will Lady Vane’s diabolical plan succeed?

The Choice of Odysseus demonstrates how the Odyssey provided Renaissance authors and readers with a poetic ethics—tools for living developed in poetry—to navigate the challenges of their age. As they endured schisms, ruptures, and failures of ideals, readers and poets turned to the Odyssey for narratives of recovery and aftermath. Sarah Van der Laan reconstructs Renaissance readings of the Odyssey from myriad sources. Situating major works by Petrarch, Poliziano, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Monteverdi, and Milton in these Odyssean contexts, she recovers a powerful Renaissance tradition of Odyssean epic. Renaisance poets adopted the Odyssey as an epic model that supplements and even opposes the Virgilian epic model of conquest and imperial foundation. For Renaissance readers and authors, the Odyssey renders heroic other kinds of lived experience: the necessity of facing the world and its challenges with only human wisdom and reason; the ability to integrate traumatic detours and reversals into a vision of a successful and accomplished self; the recovery of a private life and personal desires painfully suspended for public service. Emphasizing marriage, reconciliation, homecoming, and the return to private life and private desires as suitably heroic matter for epic and powerful conventions for narrative and poetic closure, the Renaissance Odyssey and the epics and operas it inspired confer a uniquely heroic status on experience for men and women alike.

This volume focuses on the reception of antiquity in the performing and visual arts from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. It explores the tensions and relations of gender, sexuality, eroticism and power in reception. Such universal themes dictated plots and characters of myth and drama, but also served to portray historical figures, events and places from Classical history. Their changing reception and reinterpretation across time has created stereotypes, models of virtue or immoral conduct, that blend the original features from the ancient world with a diverse range of visual and performing arts of the modern era.The volume deconstructs these traditions and shows how arts of different periods interlink to form and transmit these images to modern audiences and viewers. Drawing on contributions from across Europe and the United States, a trademark of the book is the inclusive treatment of all the arts beyond the traditional limits of academic disciplines.

Penelope has been haunted by the spirits her entire life. Now a young woman, she has realized that her purpose is to help them, often by getting revenge. When a young spirit named Grace wants revenge on her husband, the man responsible for her death, Penelope once again cannot resist helping. Only this time, the target is an irresistibly handsome and sweet man who seems to want nothing more than a simple life, forgiveness, and someone to love.This job might turn out to be more than Penelope can handle. (This book is an adult paranormal romance that is not part of the Solace Series. It may be read independently from Sarah's Solace #1 and Alexis' Afterlife #2).