"Joseph is a three-logged German Shepherd dog. At the end of the story, Joseph saves Benjamin from drowning in a river and is adopted by the grateful and delighted little boy. But before Joseph gets to that point, he discovers that he was born with a short, deformed leg, and must go through ""physical therapy"" to learn how to walk. He contends with feelings of loneliness and isolation. The book was written in order to give disabled children hope and to help mothers and fathers talk with their children about living with physical limitations. The artist's delightful pen-and-ink-drawings bring the story to life."

Curious about ancient stories, once a part of our culture, that schools fail to teach today? Our Supreme Court gave guidelines so classes could read them, so why don't they? Are schools fearful that teachers will present the stories for religious purposes? Shouldn't students know of Eve and her fatal choice of pride's poison, a poison that took her life, sent one son to the grave, and condemned her firstborn to wander the earth? Shouldn't they know of Lamech, drunk on that same poison, singing self-exalting songs of brutality and leading the world into a violence that could be cleansed only by raging floods? Also, for their great comfort, shouldn't students know of Jacob's sons, so much like Cain yet united by a brother who laid aside pride's call for revenge--even pride's call for personal justice? This book leads public school students through the first part of the world's hidden-away bestseller, marking out a path through the legal thickets and pits of the Bible into the hearts of the ancients--people who had the same joys, sorrows, failures, and hopes that all of us have, even today. A Student's Notes on Genesis is for curious-minded students and for public school teachers who know that education should include the world's bestseller.

I first became interested in genealogy when I was about twelve. It was then that my paternal grandmother first introduced me to a book entitled Genealogy of the Fell Family in America Descended from Joseph Fell. This book, which was published in 1891, included my grandfather, Charles McConnell Lightburn. I was struck by the time span covered by the book—nearly three hundred years—and was fascinated by the fact that all of the people in that book were related to one another and to me either by blood or marriage! My grandmother later gave me that book, and it became the first book in my genealogical library. My grandfather and my great-aunt Mary told me that their father had fought for the North during the Civil War by the side of his older brother, who was a brigadier general. This fascinated me. They also told me that there was a town in West Virginia called Lightburn. I couldn’t wait to find it on a map! My own genealogical research did not begin until the late 1970s when I requested the Civil War records of my great grandfather, Calvin Luther Lightburn, and his brothers from the National Archives. During the 1980s, I continued my research, albeit at a very low level of activity. It was not until the early 1990s when I moved to the Washington, DC, area that I became intensively involved in—some might even say addicted to—genealogy. The resources in the Washington, DC, area are extensive, and I ended up spending many happy (and sometimes frustrating) hours conducting research in the National Archives, Library of Congress, and the library of the Daughters of the American Revolution. By 1999, I had amassed a great deal of genealogical information, most of which was stuffed in cardboard boxes. I was encouraged to put what I had on paper by Faye M. (Brown) Lightburn, who had published her book, Revolutionary Soldier Samuel Brown and Some of his Family in 1993. So after attending several related sessions at the National Genealogical Society Conference in the States, which was held that year in Providence, Rhode Island, I finally screwed up my courage and plunged in. I published the original book in 2003. This book is the second and probably last edition.

Saint Bernard Judge Benjamin and his new mate continue to take care of their human family while coping with a sick neighbor and other predicaments.

This book provides a critical assessment of Benjamin’s writings on Franz Kafka and of Benjamin’s related writings. Eliciting from Benjamin’s writings a conception of philosophy that is political in its dissociation from – its becoming renegade in relation to, its philosophic shame about – established laws, norms, and forms, the book compares Benjamin’s writings with relevant works by Agamben, Heidegger, Levinas, and others. In relating Benjamin’s writings on Kafka to Benjamin’s writings on politics, the study delineates a philosophic impetus in literature and argues that this impetus has potential political consequences. Finally, the book is critical of Benjamin’s messianism insofar as it is oriented by the anticipated elimination of exceptions and distractions. Exceptions and distractions are, the book argues, precisely what literature, like other arts, brings to the fore. Hence the philosophic, and the political, importance of literature.