Kirjahaku

As a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1970s, the author met and fell in love with a Thai woman named Orawan. Torn between love of country and the man she loved, Orawan risked all-life, liberty, and personal happiness-for the betterment of her country. These fifty-one poems pay tribute to her courage, her character, and her fight against corruption.

Author Gerry Christmas is one of "Kennedy's Children," an idealist who answered the call to join the Peace Corps not once but twice. In Breathing the Same Air, a gritty memoir of love and loss, he narrates his volunteer experiences in both Thailand and Samoa. From the sultry alleys of Bangkok to the serpentine paths of his Polynesian island, Christmas explores new frontiers of mind, body, and spirit. He shares stories from cross-cultural miscues and screw-ups to Peace Corps politics and squabbles. He also ventures into the classroom where he talks about his Thai and Samoan students who effuse a certain candor, curiosity, and charm. And he narrates pursuing Aied, his long-lost love, and the difficult decision to return to the United States. As Christmas looks back on his Peace Corps days, he is mindful of President Kennedy's words: "... we all inhabit this small planet. We all cherish our children's futures. We all breathe the same air. And we are all mortal."

In Reports of My Death: Beyond-the-Grave Confessions of North American Writers, author Gerry Christmas taps into a literary limbo where he relives the lives of writers in an endless cycle of introspection. Sixty-five ?autobiographies? tell you ? How Mark Twain Americanized the English language and put a human face on the slave trade. How Edgar Allan Poe came up with the basic theory of relativity fifty years before Albert Einstein. How Walt Whitman used his poetic genius to make people more loving and less homophobic. How Emily Dickinson did not live a life devoid of adventure and romance. How Henry David Thoreau inspired Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. How Herman Melville anticipated the thoughts and ideas of Sigmund Freud. How Kate Chopin portrayed adultery with a sympathetic eye and was ostracized for doing so.

In Reports of My Death: Beyond-the-Grave Confessions of North American Writers, author Gerry Christmas taps into a literary limbo where he relives the lives of writers in an endless cycle of introspection. Sixty-five ?autobiographies? tell you ? How Mark Twain Americanized the English language and put a human face on the slave trade. How Edgar Allan Poe came up with the basic theory of relativity fifty years before Albert Einstein. How Walt Whitman used his poetic genius to make people more loving and less homophobic. How Emily Dickinson did not live a life devoid of adventure and romance. How Henry David Thoreau inspired Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. How Herman Melville anticipated the thoughts and ideas of Sigmund Freud. How Kate Chopin portrayed adultery with a sympathetic eye and was ostracized for doing so.

Dabbling has often distracted and inspired poets, musicians, painters, scientists, and conquerors throughout the ages. Now, dedicated dilettante Gerry Christmas takes a shot at this long ignored but all too common predilection. Abraham Lincoln, Jack London, Jeffery Farnol, Jack Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Noam Chomsky, Bobby Fischer, Basset Hounds, MS?13, nursing home inmates, epileptics, Thai students, Asian despots, Buddhist monks, even God are paints for Christmas's palette. Asked why he finds dabbling so enticing, Christmas did not hesitate. I haven't a clue, ? he said. ?I?ve dabbled away most of my life and have every intention of dabbling away the rest of it.? So there you have it: the allure of dabbling. Enjoy the book.