In 1978, Ralph Dranow and Daniel Marlin met while working at the Oakland (CA) main post office. They hit it off immediately, finding a common passion for writing and concern for social justice. Their nascent friendship took root on the level of deep mutual caring as well as support for each other's writing. And in time, they formed a writing group that lasted 38 years until Dan's death in 2017, and continues today with new members. This book is both a testament to the remarkable, incisive writing of Dan Marlin by his best friend, Ralph, and an opportunity for readers to taste the riches of this friendship through the poetry of both writers, Ralph being an equally remarkable poet (though with a different flavor). Sometimes their subjects converge, and other times they follow their own unique paths. But in all cases, readers are in for a moving feast for the mind, heart, and moral spirit. A central thread linking the poems of these two close friends is a sense of compassion for all living beings, especially those easily overlooked, the vulnerable ones, often existing on the margins of society, animals as well as human beings. Humor frequently makes an appearance in these poems, reminding us that life also has its lighter side. Dan Marlin was an accomplished artist who created many vibrant paintings and drawings-some of which appear in this book. This quality of vibrancy is evident in his poems, as well, with his rich imagery and precise details, leaving his readers and listeners with indelible impressions. Ralph Dranow is a close observer of people, and his poems often express the subtle beauty of ordinary human beings. Most of all, the poems in this book pulsate with life, reflecting the joy, wonder, and pain of being alive on this earth. To Be Human Forgive me not the Angel begged, I've brought you no loaves of bread, no honey, not even a single soul. My shoes have turned to dust, my hat to sand, the heaven gold in my pocket is become but ash in the wind, and my wings melted in one small glance of your sun! Good, answered God- now you know, perhaps a little, what it means to be human. -Daniel Marlin Cocoon Only a short distance From the bustle and chatter, The serious business of recreation At the Hawaii Hilton Hotel, Naomi and I lie in a hammock On a balmy winter night Glittering with stars And a full moon. As we gently sway, Our bodies sing, Surrender to night's embrace, The wind licking our faces. We revel in our island of silence, Our silken cocoon, And the untrammeled sky Winking at us, Trembling with light. -Ralph Dranow

At Work on the Garments of Refuge: Poems by Daniel Marlin and Ralph Dranow

Arts & Photography

Dranow, Ralph

Marlin, Daniel

Individual Artists

Rose Press

A "book whisperer" charts a path to finding your own path through writing a book - and revealing your true nature in the process. Writing a book is an organic growth that can only come out of you, not a formula you need to learn from someone else. This deeply encouraging book about writing a book assumes that it's what's inside the writer that makes the book valuable and the process of writing a book worthwhile. Where most writing books focus on the product alone, this intimate companion highlights the person doing the writing. As you get more and more acquainted with what's inside you, you'll find that writing your book flows easily, surprising and frequently delighting you with what - and who - you find. STARTING YOUR BOOK will show you how to discover, treasure, and use what is in you to write the book of your heart - which will naturally translate to the hearts of your readers. "What Naomi does superbly is to evoke the creative and articulate in each person who works with her - to such a degree that each one is surprised at his/her own talent for expression." - Gay Luce Naomi Rose is a writer, book developer, and publisher in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the creator of "Writing from the Deeper Self" (www.essentialwriting.com).

Starting Your Book: A Guide to Navigating the Blank Page by Attending to What's Inside You

Self-Help

Rose, Naomi

Creativity

MotherWealth is a magical story of how the death of an old sense of self brings an endless ocean of treasures from within, including money. It offers a much-needed and heart-warming perspective on why the soulless patriarchal model of money isn't working - and what will. You don't have to "Go Out" and get it. You just have to be Home to receive it. A woman loses the seeming security of a long marriage, breaks her ankle, and can't go out to look for work at a time when she needs more money than ever. Forced to be still, she embarks on an inner journey to find the root of her poverty of separation - and, through the Divine Mother, meets up with source of her true wealth. And then the money just comes. This moving account of an intimate journey to reclaim the eclipsed heart and the body, and to rediscover the ever-present ground of Being available in the moment, has universal - and timely - implications for our personal and collective economies. You don't have to "go out" to get money and all that comes with MotherWealth. You just have to be Home to receive it. "In this deeply warm-hearted and beautifully written book Naomi Rose takes us with her on a journey to discover a woman's way into the realms of money. On her search for answers she finds herself recalling learning to knit at her grandmother's knee, suckling her baby, and playing the piano. Through her very personal and profound journey she helps us move through and past our shame around money, and learn an instinctual way to open to allowing our wealth to come to us by giving up going out to get it." --Barbara Wilder, author, "Money Is Love: Reconnecting the Sacred Origins of Money" "A finely crafted literary work which carefully plumbs the depth of poverty-mind and what it is like to be born a woman in this time. The story is one which carries the seeker back to her center in a world of scarcity and confusion. Naomi embraces her losses, disillusionments, and heartbreaks, undoing her conditioned programming to a false self and finding compassion for her real self. Abandoning the myth of 'Going Out to make money,' she courageously enters the path of awakening. Naomi is a princess weaving straw into gold,using her experiences and interpretations of deprivation and tragedy as the path to the abundance of The Mother within herself. There are very few books being written today that come close to this kind of genius."--Judith Avalon, author, "Entering into the Heart of The Mother: Spiritual Practice Embodied in Daily Life" "MotherWealth captures the way it feels to value the soul's journey as least as much as money. How we are with money speaks volumes about how we relate to our own inner riches, as the book illustrates through deeply personal, feminine stories and reflections. This book poignantly addresses on an intimate level what The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist has done on a societal level: bringing the heart of compassion into our evolving understanding of how money is connected to the soul. This feminine approach to money and its place in our lives has the potential to connect and heal us. One of MotherWealth's valuable contributions is to open the conversation and offer a pathway to wholeness. Read it and join the conversation."--Kay Sandberg, Director, Lynne Twist's "The Soul of Money Institute" "An interesting exploration into one woman's complicated and highly personal journey to a healthy relationship to her money. Naomi Rose encourages us all to examine our assumptions about money and to be conscious about our behavior around it."--Susan McCarthy, "The Soul Authority on Money Management"; author, "The Value of Money"; host, PBS special, "Money and Emotions"

MotherWealth: The Feminine Path to Money

Parenting & Relationships

Family Relationships

When Eloise Aitken Farren says, in the introduction to this book of tales from her life, that her only aim is to bring a smile to your lips, you'd better believe her. If you make your way through these ninety tales, ranging from the first five years of her life to the latter years of her work and residence as a Franciscan Sister in her forties (stories of leaving the convent and marrying the love of her life are not part of this memoir), you most likely will have increased your well-being by laughing out loud many more times than you thought possible! And it's not just the funny things that Eloise did, or said, or that happened to her (although they all truly did). It's also her gift for seeing the humor in things--all the mishaps that come to human beings, even those with a sacred vocation--and how rich and magical the ordinary world can be when this joyful, caring, and humorous perspective is the guiding principle for living. But just because she became a nun, don't for a moment think that this made her some kind of goody-goody. Her human foibles, inventiveness, audaciousness, and sheer love of the adventure of life are all chronicled here. An appetizer of examples includes: <ul>
<li>Exulting to her mother that she had won second prize in the third-grade race, but neglecting to mention that there were only two contestants ("The Race in Third Grade");</li> <li>The slippery soft-ice-cream mess that piled up on the floor of Zesto's Drive-In after the handle of the spigot broke off in her hand, a la "I Love Lucy" ("Another Zesto's Drive-In Story");</li> <li>Enjoying kissing a handsome stranger on the train that was taking her to the convent for the first time ("Oops! The Last Tale Was Not the Last Fling");</li> <li>Hauling a lamb that was due onstage at a Christmas pageant into a station wagon ("The Lamb That Stole the Show");</li> <li>Taking the wrong road to the airport and ending up on a private Air Force base, where a distraught military man kept shouting, "I have orders to shoot you, but how can I shoot a nun?" ("You Crashed My Gate!");</li> <li>and many, many more tales.</li> </ul>
If anything, Eloise's tales teach us that when life offers difficult raw material (a cranky, critical superior; an awkward situation; an enthusiasm gone awry), you can always turn it into a story that will bring on tears of healing laughter. Just encountering the feast of tales chronicled in this gem of a book may be enough to switch on your "Eloise" channel, the next time an opportunity to see compassion and humor in a situation comes around.

Tales of Eloise: True Tales to Bring a Smile to Your Heart and an Honored Seat at the Banquet of Life

Humor & Entertainment

Aitken Farren, Eloise

Humor

A New Life

What can someone who has been married over 50 years to the same woman tell you about how to be a happy husband? As it turns out--a lot! In this wise and charming book illustrated by the author, Lee Evers draws from his personal experience to offer husbands tips on how to bring conjugal magic into the most ordinary of activities--waking up in the morning, going to bed at night, watching TV together, going food shopping, having guests over, finding mutual interests, compromising to get closer to each other, and much, much more. From money-matters to driving in the car together...from having pleasant conversations to caring for your spouse when she is ill or tired...Lee Evers gives a trustworthy navigational guide for getting past the bumps of marriage from the happy husband's point of view. And don't worry: he covers sex and romance in this marital kit, too. Who better to look to for advice than a 90-something-year-old veteran of marriage (as well as of World War II)? This book is a delightful read, something to look forward to and pore through more than once. And as a bonus you'll get to learn for yourself just what the title promises: How to Be a Happy Husband. Spoiler alert: The secret of becoming a happy husband? Do all that you can to make sure that your wife is happy!

How to Be a Happy Husband: A Marital Wisdom-Kit (based on 50+ years of marriage and 90+ years of life experience)

Evers, Lee

We Have All Been the "Others": Reflections of a First Generation's Daughter on Belonging, Democracy, and a New American Dream

Biographies & Memoirs

Patricia J. Marino

Community & Culture

The City and the Fields: Multicultural Themes in Modern California Literature, by Marek Breiger, provides an indispensable guide through California's rich, multicultural literary landscape. "What America is to the world," wrote Robert Penn Warren (referring to John Steinbeck), "California is to America." California literature - which is multi-regional and multicultural - reflects major themes of American literature in terms of the dreams of refuge for the oppressed, justice for the poor, and dreams of new beginnings. Focusing on literature that is specifically Californian helps us understand how we are a part of a procession that is larger than ourselves. To this end, The City and the Fields explores writers of California literature from the beginning of the 20th century with Jack London, to the end of the 20th century with Amy Tan, and the beginning of the 21st century with Gerald Haslam. The 40 writers explored in this book are: Jack London / Amy Tan / Malcolm Margolin / Theodora Kroeber / Sylvia Sun Minnick / John Muir / William Saroyan / John Steinbeck / Horace McCoy / Charles Bukowsky / Nathaniel West / Tillie Olsen / Dorothea Lange (a literary photographer / Toshio Mori / Maya Angelou / Ella Leffland / Jean Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston / Jose Antonio Villareal / Floyd Salas / Luis Valdez / Frank Chin / Maxine Hong Kingston / Gus Lee / Leonard Gardner / Jack Kerouac / Joan Didion / Hugh Pearson / Jess Mowry / Scott Momaday / Thomas Sanchez / Greg Sarris / Malcolm Margolin / Richard Rodriguez / Gary Soto / Dorothy Bryant / Herbert Gold / Hisaye Yamamoto / Wallace Stegner / Gerald Haslam / and Richard Dokey.

The City and the Fields

Literature & Fiction

Breiger, Marek

History & Criticism

If you want to give your heart a good exercising, the art of Cara Leslie Berton will help you with that. In our highly accomplishment-focused culture, the surface of life may be all we get to be presented with, while our hearts have to live under the radar. So we don't get to know our hearts in their deeper, more longing capacities, and where that longing might lead us-into the darkness, but also through the darkness into light; into our human loneliness, but also through our loneliness into love and a larger Belonging. The 98 original images in this book open us into that fertile territory of the heart. Her subjects include love and intimacy, suffering and redemption, family, longing and belonging (both human and religious), nostalgia, nature, the angelic world, aging, beauty, and more. And because she communicates all this through the wordless medium of her artwork, we get to encounter certain feeling places in our own hearts that we might not otherwise recognize. When we are conditioned to the glossy surface of ourselves, how much of us beneath the surface goes hungry? Someone has to paint the subtler realities of feeling, in its many dimensions-as Van Gogh did, as Rembrandt did-for us to know the fullness of ourselves and who we might become. Cara Berton's drawings and paintings give us this. As you go through this book, may you find in these graphic expressions what your own heart, soul, and spirit need for your own healing journey.

Dancer Glory

Berton, Cara Leslie

American Cinematographer: Handbook and Reference Guide, 1947

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

American Cinematographer - Handbook and Reference Guide (1947)

Rose, Jackson J.

Photography & Video

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Books by Rose Press