"A Sock in the Eye" is an actual and humorous account of a young print journalist's experiences while working her way around the world. The odyssey took four years. Its account is another reflection of that pivotal point in the 20th century called The Sixties.
In the 1960s BT (Before Terrorism), a young woman at the beginning of her print journalism career decided to join the Peace Corps. She was not accepted by that
august body which was just as well as things turned out. Her motives were suspect anyway because all she really wanted was a free ride to Africa.
Rejection by the Peace Corps was a disappointment, but only a minor one. All it meant was that the young woman would have to pay her own way to Africa. That turned out to be a good thing, as this account shows. The Peace Corps rejection also indelibly stamped on the young woman's mind and heart a kind of parameter that went, 'Do your own thing equals pay your own freight and if it doesn't, something more than math is wrong here.'
This book, among other things, shows what wonderful things can happen when you don't give up and when you follow the advice of those sneakers that tell you to 'just do it.'
The book is dedicated to Dorothy Parker. Its title comes from her verse:
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"All There Is" is a novel that is a different kind of love story. It is a story of love as journey. It is Muffin's story.
Born illegitimate, reared and isolated in institutions and foster homes with no name of her own, no visitors from the 'outside' other than caseworkers, and no
siblings, Muffin endures what she later refers to as 'the silent years.' She survives physical and mental torment, and emotional starvation. She dreams of
freedom, longs to be claimed, and yearns for identity and place.
Her story is our story in its portrayal of the power of, and need for, love as acceptance, as compassion and as 'belonging' in each and every life. These needs when met empower every life whether that life is lived as child, journalist, psychiatrist, nun, or friend, the roles of the primary and
secondary characters in Muffin's life and story.
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"many loves and further journeys" is the second collection of poems by the author. The first one, published more than a quarter century ago and now out of print, was entitled "First Love and Other Journeys." Some of the works from that first
collection are here, yet this latest offering primarily records journeys made and loves encountered since that time.
The sources for "many loves and further journeys" are those impressions of, and responses to, singular and collective internal and external experiences shared by so many, the echoes of which continue to 'whirlpool' human behavior in this new millennium.
Here, for example, will be found reactions to a President's assassination, the 'long hot summer' of the struggle for civil rights, and the first moon landing. Here, too, will be found songs of love in its varied manifestations.
The book is divided into "many loves" and "further journeys." It now begins a new journey, the one that takes it into the hearts and minds of other wayfarers.
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