Kenny grows up in, and eventually leaves, a matriarchal Christian cult, but now he misses all his friends. Should Kenny return? His hilarious and sometimes dark memories are woven together with vignettes from his dysfunctional life in the outer world.

Ann Josephson is a twenty-five-year-old sociopath whose compulsive kleptomania manifests itself in the most unlikely of places: the community center where she works out every day. The walls of the community center insulate her from the terrors of the outside world, which include her freelance work as a graphic artist; her socialite parents, who pay the better part of her living expenses; her therapist, who devotedly punches the clock; and the dark void of romantic relationships. As Ann battles the inner demons that plague her millennial psyche, she must also battle the fiends that plague her at the gym: the loudly grunting beefcake who can’t be bothered to drop his weights at a reasonable volume, the naked old lady in the locker room using a towel as butt floss, the housewife in yoga pants that obviate the need for yoga wheeling her double stroller up and down the indoor track. Set in suburban Kansas City in the early 2010s, Community Klepto—a droll combination of Bridget Jones’ Diary and Choke—makes incarnate the characters and shenanigans that go on in every gym in the world.

Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Looking Back to Look Forward is a prelude to a longer book. It is framed as a conversation between Cormac Russell, who is a leader in the Asset Based Movement in Europe, and Director of ABCD Europe and Professor John McKnight the Co-Director of the ABCD Institute.This book provides a detailed background to Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), with a particular emphasis on the contributions of the people, such as Illich, Alinsky, Mendelsohn, Miller, Snow, Block and others, who have been most influential in shaping the conceptual framework and practice of this approach.It also provides a deep insight into Professor John McKnight's (one of the originators, and the most central figure in ABCD alongside Professor Jody Kretzmann) thinking on society and community. It offers a wealth of commentary on the challenges facing society and community, what needs to change, and how we might go about it.This publication is therefore a must read for anybody interested in social policy and community development. It will be of particular interest to those seeking to gain a deep, well informed and rounded understanding of Asset Based Community Development from its beginning to the current day.

This volume brings together essays which suggest that the relationship between Canada and Europe is a two-way process, as historically the traffic between them has been: either may have something to offer the other. Europe too acknowledges situations today in which difference and community are hard terms to reconcile. Difference refers to gender, sexuality, race, nationality, or language. Community is the collective understanding which must continually be renegotiated and reconstructed among these factors. The Canadian-European connection is one in which it seems especially appropriate to explore such circumstances. The topics covered include pioneer women's writing, transcultural women's fiction, canonical taxonomy of the contemporary novel, the city poem in Confederate Canada, poetry of the Great War, various ethno-cultural perspectives (Jewish, South Asian, Italian; Native reappropriations; Quebec cinema), literature and the media, and small-press publishing. Some of the authors treated: Sandra Birdsell, Nicole Brossard, Jack Hodgins, Henry Kreisel, Robert Kroetsch, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Archibald Lampman, Malcolm Lowry, Lesley Lum, Daphne Marlatt, Susanna Moodie, Bharati Mukherjee, Alice Munro, Frank Paci, and Susan Swan.

Written by a parent for parents, this opinionated, personal, and easy-to-use guide has hundreds of ideas to keep the kids entertained for an hour, a day, or a weekend! Fun with the Family Oregon leads the way to amusement parks, historical attractions, children’s museums, wildlife habitats, festivals, parks, and much more. The whole family will enjoy . . . Donning your 10-gallon hats and cowboy boots (or baseball caps and sneakers) at the Pendleton Round-Up, one of America’s largest rodeos. Enjoying the tide pools (at low tide) around the base of 235-foot Haystack Rock near Cannon Beach, one of the world’s largest freestanding monoliths. Flying high at the sight of the fighter planes and blimps in the Tillamook Air Museum, the world’s largest clear-span wood building.

Congratulations to all the men and women out there who are blessed to be called parents and who take the time to care about how their children grow up. There is no greater privilege in life than bringing a tiny new human into this world and then trying to raise him or her properly during their childhood. Being a parent means to raise a child with the utmost love and passion so they can have a successful life. Parents must take into account that raising extraordinary kids requires all the intelligence, wisdom, and determination they will be able to muster. This book will help you become a wiser, more determined parent with the easy to follow month by month parenting plan. A solid, intact parenting plan will have a significantly positive impact on a child’s present and future wellbeing and offers countless benefits for both parents and children. In fact children who grow up in homes where parents have strategies for success are less likely to experience a wide range of problems (academic, social, emotional, cognitive), not only in childhood but later on in adulthood as well This book make sure that parents always keep in mind that Mothers and Fathers shape the future of the world, because they shape their children.

Although restorative justice is probably one of the most talked about topics in contemporary criminology, little has been written about how community involvement in restorative justice translates into practice. While advocates have presented the community as an essential pillar of restorative justice, the rationale for why and how this is the case remains underdeveloped and largely unchallenged. This book offers an empirical and theoretical explanation of what ‘community involvement’ means and what work it does in restorative justice. Drawing on an empirical case study and the wider sociological literature, The Role of Community in Restorative Justice examines the involvement of the community in one selected practice of restorative justice and also considers the implications of the English and Welsh experience for development of a more coherent framework for operationalizing community involvement in restorative justice practices. It is argued that restorative justice programmes need to start from a more concrete and up-to-date notion of community. While operationalizing community involvement, they need to acknowledge, all at once: the importance of place; the importance of family links, friendship and other social ties; and the importance of similar social traits and identities. This book is essential reading for students, researchers and academics in the fields of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, community studies, policy studies, social policy and socio-legal studies. This book will also be valuable reading for a variety of practitioners and policymakers, particularly working with restorative justice and youth justice.

Sets forth and examines the challenge of restoring health to society and its democratic institutions.