ETHICS FOR RASCALS spotlights the romantic adventures, provocative ethics, and playful philosophy of the prince of storytellers, Robert Louis Stevenson, quixotic wanderer and prototype for Sir James M. Barries Peter Pan. This unique introduction to RLS and his spirited mate, Fanny Osbourne -- who fell in love in the romantic environs of Paris and married under the spell of California's Big Sur-Monterey coast -- throws down the gauntlet, daring readers to turn every trial into an adventure, to do nothing that insults their own souls, and to have a little open-hearted fun along the way to El dorado. Recognizing the inner illumination of even the humblest life, Stevenson urges: "Find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action. That is the explanation, that the excuse!"

SHEPHERDS OF PAN ON THE BIG SUR-MONTEREY COAST is a medley of lively, literate essays about the Nature wisdom linking some unlikely bedfellows: Robert Louis Stevenson, Gertrude Atherton, Jack London, Robinson Jeffers, Jaime de Angulo, John Steinbeck, Eric Barker, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and others, with a pertinent postscript on William James, father of American psychology. All these luminaries came to perceive divinity in the awesome, double-dealing power of Nature, symbolized by the Greek god Pan. Many became pantheists, or nature mystics, under the spell of the alternately soft and violent landscape of Californias central coast. The book is a multicolored meditation on a deeply rooted -- and often overlooked -- human need to reconnect with Nature, wellspring of our inner joy and psychic wholeness.

TRAVELING BACKWARD is a highly original philosophic romp beyond the youth of old age with a quixotic ‘journalist turned mom turned academic turned peasant.’ It’s a kind of light-hearted guide to the wisdom of the ages—from Socrates to existentialism and beyond—gleaned during a struggle to recover the images that fi rst touched her heart and to answer two questions: Who am I really? Where does the world come from? It’s a colorful, occasionally poignant, journey that could help you look at life through the reverent eyes of a child again. GLIMPSES OF ‘TRAVELING BACKWARD’ : “You two remind me of Peter Pan. Trouble is, I’m not sure which one of you is Peter Pan. Well, I was taken aback. But my mate took action. Muttering something negative about fairy stories, he headed for the door and disappeared down the hall. I started to follow him but changed my mind. Instead, I headed for the public library to reread Peter Pan. Had I missed something?” (Elayne Wareing Fitzpatrick) “Human life – indeed all life – is poetry. It’s we who live it, unconsciously, day by day. . . Yet in its inviolable wholeness it lives us, it composes us. . . We are works of art, but we are not the artist. . . Dare everything, need nothing.” (Lou Andreas—Salome) “I relate to [Andreas—Salome’s] passionate struggle for truth, to her ultimate reverence for all life, and to her desire to enjoy intellectual friendships with a variety of men, free of sexual overtones.” (Fitzpatrick) “I was discovering that, deep down, I didn’t really ‘take’ to popular culture, crowds, and bustling cities, regardless of my curiosity, regardless of my journalist’s delight in writing about all of it.” (Fitzpatrick) “If you can’t change the world, change worlds.” (St. Francis of Assisi) “If I were ever to choose a place away from my country, it would surely be a Greek island, outside Athens. . . In Greece, I feel completely at home. Maybe that’s because, as the poet Shelley said, ‘We’re all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece.” (Fitzpatrick) “Back straight and head held high, he would place his left arm on my right shoulder, snap his fingers and lead me in the graceful, deliberate movements of the Zorba dance, accompanied by a recording of Mozart’s 40th played on the bouzouki. This against a backdrop of tinkling goat bells and singing monks gathered in a distant church.” (Fitzpatrick) “Many of the highs and lows in my life. . . have resulted from conflict born of the struggle between my own strong loving, nesting needs and my equally strong needs for freedom to think, to adventure, to discover, to express myself.” (Fitzpatrick) “All parts of this one organic whole – this one God – are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, influencing each other, therefore parts of one organic whole.” (Robinson Jeffers) “How did matter happen that makes the stars and cool planets and living beings? And how did the space happen that contains the stars and planets?. . . Much is still very hypothetical. Much is still unknown. Much, we will never know. . . Life is struggle, pain and suffering. But it is also extraordinarily glorious creativity.” (Dr. Kai Woehler) “Like Socrates, I’ve experienced an inner voice that usually let’s me know when I’m about to go off-track, and I’ve come to believe, with Kant, in a moral law within.” (Fitzpatrick) “Nature’ – wonderful and awe-inspiring as it is – can’t participate in a verbal dialogue, can’t exchange and explore ideas with the human mind. We can relate to the animals, the birds, the insects, the fish, and the flora with our most primitive instincts and feel joy, spiritual ecstasy in so recognizing our kinship. Yet nothing in Nature can compare with the human need for a warm

DOING IT WITH THE COSMOS: HENRY MILLERS BIG SUR STRUGGLE FOR LOVE BEYOND SEX explores the evolving pantheistic vision and agonizing personal relationships of this rogue elephant of American literature. After years of exclusive conversations with people who knew Miller when he lived in Big Sur, the author concludes that, contrary to a popular mindset, Miller was not an apostle of gratuitous playboy sex. On the contrary, his books detail the mans tortuous efforts to integrate impulsive urges that were wholly beyond control into a higher, more spiritual, form of love that may, or may not, include sex. His message: "We dont have to make [the earth] a paradise. It is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it ... Love is not a game, its a state of being." This book is a unique introduction to one of Americas most controversial literary greats, tracing his spiritual development from its shaky beginnings in Paris through its expansion in Greece to its culmination in Big Sur. The book not only serves as a manual of happiness, it is a caveat for people planning to play house together. Millers ultimtely joyful Nature wisdom, is an antidote for what ails an entire generation of restive, sex and violence-inundated Americans.

TRANSFORMING DESPAIR IS A CANDID, HEARTENING, OCCASIONALLY PLAYFUL BOOK ROOTED IN THE PRAGMATISM OF WILLIAM JAMES, FATHER OF AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY AND PRIME MOVER OF BILL WILSON, FOUNDER OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. TAPPING INTO WISDOM OF JAMES, THE AUTHOR SUGGESTS POSSIBILITIES FOR TRANSFORMING AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS INTO A MANUAL OF HAPPINESS ORGANICALLY, WITHOUT CHRONIC DEPENDENCE ON MEDS.

This is a Tale about a tail—a tail that belonged to a little red squirrel, and his name was Nutkin. He had a brother called Twinkleberry, and a great many cousins: they lived in a wood at the edge of a lake.