The First 1,000 Days

This book traces the history of the child’s brain during the 270 days of pregnancy plus the first two years of life. Its author, the neurobiologist Yehezkel Ben-Ari, is one of the most renowned specialists in autism and childhood epilepsy. It gives us the keys to learning to detect disorders linked to brain development. Contrary to popular belief, many neurological and psychiatric illnesses occur before the age of two, particularly during pregnancy and birth! A decisive period to prepare for the health of the future child, provided you have the right information.

This great scientist also tells us the story of his life, which shaped his work as a researcher, guided by the sense of commitment and a non-conformist spirit essential to innovation in science.

The First 1,000 Days

This book traces the history of the child’s brain during the 270 days of pregnancy plus the first two years of life. Its author, the neurobiologist Yehezkel Ben-Ari, is one of the most renowned specialists in autism and childhood epilepsy. It gives us the keys to learning to detect disorders linked to brain development. Contrary to popular belief, many neurological and psychiatric illnesses occur before the age of two, particularly during pregnancy and birth! A decisive period to prepare for the health of the future child, provided you have the right information.

This great scientist also tells us the story of his life, which shaped his work as a researcher, guided by the sense of commitment and a non-conformist spirit essential to innovation in science.

A Coven of Cats

A Coven of Cats tells the true story of the author’s longstanding love affair with cats. It begins with her experiences of growing up with cats, from the age of four, and continues with the narrative of her ongoing relationship with felines, culminating in her (and her husband’s) love affairs with Burmese: animals that combine the best (and worst) features of cats, dogs and monkeys!

The book is full of humour, high drama and the tragedy of loss. The central characters are the cats but the story revolves around the intimate relationship between cats and their human staff.

A Coven of Cats demonstrates how enriching it can be for humans to share life’s ups and downs with these animals. Far from the aloofness sometimes ascribed to felines, this book shows how loving, exciting and rewarding life with cats can be.

The World According to Stoopball

In the Bronx of the 1930s, paradise for a kid was stickball in the street or roasting potatoes in a vacant lot. Nuns ran school with a firm hand, while the restless work ethic of immigrant communities shaped life at home. Long before the digital era, young people ruled the world of play. But they grew up quickly against a backdrop of war. Retired Rear Admiral (USNR) Joe Callo revisits his youth and offers insight on the pursuit of meaning in an over-circuited modern age.

The World According to Stoopball

In the Bronx of the 1930s, paradise for a kid was stickball in the street or roasting potatoes in a vacant lot. Nuns ran school with a firm hand, while the restless work ethic of immigrant communities shaped life at home. Long before the digital era, young people ruled the world of play. But they grew up quickly against a backdrop of war. Retired Rear Admiral (USNR) Joe Callo revisits his youth and offers insight on the pursuit of meaning in an over-circuited modern age.

Beyond the Chair

I have a very severe disability: I use a wheelchair full-time, have very limited use of my hands, and some people find it difficult to understand me when I speak.

This book is about how I achieved my PhD, the highest qualification a person can earn. My research took place at a special school, where I formed advocacy sessions with the young people there. In these sessions, we discussed their hopes and plans for life after school. I also shared my own experience transitioning from special education to mainstream schooling, as many of them had disabilities similar to mine.

One of the main challenges in my research was the way I gathered data. Traditional one-on-one interviews were impossible because I relied on my personal assistant to interpret my speech, while each young person often required their own interpreter. As a result, we had to explore alternative methods for collecting information.

Because I am unable to use pen and paper, observations were also challenging. My personal assistant took notes for me while we were at the school, and I would type them up on my computer when I got home.

Beyond the Chair

I have a very severe disability: I use a wheelchair full-time, have very limited use of my hands, and some people find it difficult to understand me when I speak.

This book is about how I achieved my PhD, the highest qualification a person can earn. My research took place at a special school, where I formed advocacy sessions with the young people there. In these sessions, we discussed their hopes and plans for life after school. I also shared my own experience transitioning from special education to mainstream schooling, as many of them had disabilities similar to mine.

One of the main challenges in my research was the way I gathered data. Traditional one-on-one interviews were impossible because I relied on my personal assistant to interpret my speech, while each young person often required their own interpreter. As a result, we had to explore alternative methods for collecting information.

Because I am unable to use pen and paper, observations were also challenging. My personal assistant took notes for me while we were at the school, and I would type them up on my computer when I got home.

Manifest for a Humanist Religio

In this book, we journey into the sacred spaces within our hearts, uncovering the light that shines from them, the very essence of our existence. At the dawn of time, the divine was within us, and through it, we communed with a Love that embraced all creation. Yet, as monotheistic religions and materialism took hold, we grew distant from one another, from nature, and from the diversity that once united us. We became strangers to the living world around us, whether human, animal, plant, or mineral, all bearers of the same primordial energy.

This book invites you to rediscover that connection, to awaken to the truth that we are all divine, sacred vessels of the divine presence. Reconnection begins with the realization that something vital is missing, something we sense deep within, a longing, an inexpressible nostalgia. Saudade.

Shattered

Shelter from the Storm

So many accounts of the years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution focus on its violence and suffering. In this unusual story, Aili describes a happy early childhood in a community whose way of life, with its beliefs and traditions, had been cultivated through centuries. With equal innocence she is able to carry the reader from the intimacy of bedtime to the spectacle of a public shaming, from the facts of foot binding to the mythology of fishermen. Naïve as she must have been, she has no real understanding of the first irruptions of Mao’s bleak communist philosophy into a stable community, and can only hint at the terror, with its re-education and punishments, which accompanied it.

Life and Death

A young girl can’t stop bleeding, a husband has just found out his wife has terminal cancer.

A twenty-five-year-old has been permanently disfigured by her abusive boyfriend. A young nurse was found hanged in her room, the note she left stating stress from work and bullying.

I and my fellow colleagues have spent years trying to save these lives, and in turn help our colleagues; sometimes we succeed, sometimes God has other plans, or things become so embroiled that we are helpless to help. More so now with the added nightmare of battling the Covid-19 epidemic, things have become unbearable. Watching the young, elderly and fellow nurses and doctors die on a daily basis. Having to wear unbearable PPE for gruelling 14 hr shifts.

This is a story of hope, pain, death, and a twist of fate so unreal that it would change my life forever. I used to think good things and luck only happened to other people, until it happened to me. First I became ill myself, nearly died, survived through the sheer hard work of my colleagues, and had a stroke of luck so freaky that it would change my life forever.

Hope floats and good things do happen if you believe hard enough.

Gropius and the Spirit of TAC

This  study describes how Walter Gropius of former Bauhaus fame transformed himself from the image of the omnipotent “Master-Builder” to the humble “Grope” of later years. Having come as an emigree from his native Germany to the US, he had to cope with quite a different office culture based on teamwork: Not the “single genius” but a collective approach to problem solving was the order of the day, coupled with a conciliatory manner of debate among equals. With that, his legendary firm “The Architects Collaborative” (called TAC for short) in Boston was to become the star of the profession in the USA, over the course of some 50 years. Thanks to the combined  talent and vigorous input of seven younger partners, the firm succeeded in gaining large commissions at home and internationally.

The well-designed school and campus buildings in New England found their equivalent in large university projects such as in Baghdad and Tunisia. Internally, the special aura at TAC was personified by a strong collective spirit of individuals in their own right. In turn, the office attracted a highly motivated staff of apprentices from all around the world. Grope’s personal charm, his humor and encouragement of young people got him life-long affection. Not the least, his pledge for the role of women in the profession left its mark on a whole new generation of architects’ offices to follow.

The author was a member of this team from 1962 to 1964 and kept in touch with Grope until his death in 1969.  An eye-witness account setting straight TAC’s merits to “Mid-Century Modernism”.