English Hearing

"It's not every day you find a human hand while digging potatoes. But that's exactly what happened to Leonard Johnson on a Saturday morning not long ago." That's how this quirky little story begins. When you're a fast-failing organic farmer in New Hampshire, with a known termagant for a wife, an event like this can be devastating to your small profits when the news gets out - especially since that ancient hand has peculiar "qualities."

In 1997, Bella Bathurst began to go deaf. Within a few months, she had lost half her hearing, and the rest was slipping away. She wasn't just missing punchlines, she was missing most of the conversation - and all of the jokes. For the next 12 years deafness shaped her life, until, in 2009, everything changed again. Sound draws on this extraordinary experience, exploring what it is like to lose your hearing and - as Bella eventually did - to get it back.

They give you just enough to keep you comfortable and quiet...if you're willing to put up all the burdensome regulations and intrusions into your private. And most people do. But is it worth it? At long last, William Oudeis didn't think so. But then it cost him everything. "SlumberJoy, a global matress-manufacturing company, had its largest US plant in Doulosville, Oklahoma, where William Oudeis lived. And William worked there, had for the past 30 years. He was a forklift operator. Out of a hopeless sense of irony, his co-workers called him 'Billy the Kid.'"

The original Ferris wheel was designed and constructed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Roughly 280 million people visit theme parks every year and take approximately 1.7 billion rides. And there are slightly fewer than 10 Ferris wheel-related deaths each year. So the odds are generally in your favor. But Cody Jackson wasn't aware of any of this.

We all think we want 20/20 vision, don't we? But in the metaphysical and psychological realms we often prefer our accustomed blindness. It's far more comfortable. Here are two stories that take a close, 20/20 look at these things.

"It was that most loathsome of all things: an uncanny, routine-disrupting inconvenience and anomaly." That's what, as the result of an unforeseen event, unexpectedly invades and upsets Elmore Wiggins' safely ordered life. For Elmore had never reckoned on the paranormal or the preternatural. But now that he's had his accident, he is "seeing" certain events in the near future - including his own (although he doesn't know it yet).

Just a few years down the road, the new health-care plan is firmly entrenched. A new bill, Ethical Assessment of End-of Life Care, has also been enacted into law. And the authorities are ruthlessly implementing it throughout the land - no more medical resources wasted on the defective and dying, equitable distribution of quality medical care, no more lingering half-lives sustained by expensive machinery. The "thanatos solution" has arrived. But there are, as always, unexpected ramifications, especially for those who wanted it.

Note to Self as a 9-Year-Old Child. Hello Child of God, I know you are saying "What?" Your Wisdom at age nine years, tells you to fasten your seatbelt - we are going for a ride. Two days before your ninth birthday Mama goes to her heavenly home. I started my road to alcoholism at 18 yrs. A new day will begin at 29 years, in a strange world of recovery. At 70 yrs, you will learn the concept of Vision Tracking Disability. The first time that you will read a book, not on CD. Beginning with a dream to come true writing your memoir.

Billy is a wonderful story of learning to love your gifts even in the face of peer pressure. Author K Wendt brings to life Susie’s friend Billy as he learns to be proud of his special talents.

A novel dangerously close to evil and too close to reality... dabbling in things not of God. Maya is a young woman with extraordinary prospects who is drowning in intense discontent. In the midst of her anguish, she meets Cha Ma, a Hindu guru. Immediately she believes that Cha Ma is an avatar—a human incarnation—of the goddess Kali, the most malevolent and destructive of all Hindu deities. Spellbound, Maya leaves behind her parents, faith, career, life, and moves to India to live in Cha Ma's ashram as a Hindu. Her choice hurls her parents into emotional, physical, and spiritual battles ...

WHAT ARE THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT? HOW CAN YOU FLOW IN THEM? You can live life plugged into the Holy Spirit zone. God wants people to know him, and you get to be the conduit of his love, supercharged with all God’s tools for purposeful living. Learn how to activate and use the the gifts of the Holy Spirit via: Relationship - hear God’s voice quickly and clearly through the world around you. Revelation - understand the messages God sends through visions, dreams, and prophetic words, and share his words in a healthy way. Revolution – be a powerhouse of Holy Spirit gifts by giving ...

Imaginative and insightful, Seeing Voices offers a way into a world that is, for many people, alien and unfamiliar - for to be profoundly deaf is not just to live in a world of silence but also to live in a world where the visual is paramount. In this remarkable book, Oliver Sacks explores the consequences of this, including the different ways in which the deaf and the hearing impaired learn to categorise their respective worlds - and how they convey and communicate those experiences to others.

Hearing Maud: A Journey for a Voice is a work of creative nonfiction that details the author’s experiences of deafness after losing most of her hearing at age four. It charts how, as she grew up, she was estranged from people and turned to reading and writing for solace, eventually establishing a career as a writer.

US Marshal Matthew Gabriel is hunting down Kyle McGregor, a ruthless killer who took the lives of both his parents before his very eyes. After McGregor escapes from a prison facility in California, Marshal Gabriel has a showdown with the convicted felon that leaves him nearly half dead in the woods of Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino mountains. Before passing out, the Marshal vows to bring McGregor to justice for his crimes.

Sanity means seeing what is real…what is there. But that's not always as easy as it sounds. Sometimes it takes a completely unexpected, violent, preternatural reversal to make us see beyond the fog. And that's exactly what you'll find in these four original, intriguing stories.