The Reflecting Pond is a collection of meditations that takes one subject at a time and covers it in depth. Whether we have a concern about self-acceptance, fear, friendship, or love, there is a chapter full of understanding thoughts. Used as an extra dose of support on specific issues, this book will help us think through day-to-day living problems. An excellent resource for those in aftercare programs.

This book is a celebration of life as seen through the eyes of a man who spent two astonishing, often difficult, and always formative years as a "mountain man" in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho and Montana. Here are the words of a man who has done what few others have chosen to do in modern times, who has experienced life differently, deliberately, primally - forced to consciously recognize his utter dependence on everything and everyone around him, eventually realizing that everyone and everything in life is a teacher, a master, a guru - if only we open ourselves to the learning. A person's view of things changes fundamentally after spending months eating little other than rattlesnakes, ants, and mice; dry-camping high on mountainsides on pitch-black nights pierced by the shrill unearthly shrieks of rutting bull elk; facing the perils of rivers, trails, weather, and wild animals while utterly alone and without the benefits of modern technologies; living without electricity, refrigeration, radio, TV, telephones, newspapers, computers, iPods, music, news, libraries, medical aid, 911, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, running water, toilet paper, extra clothes, grocery stores, groceries, or anything else you yourself couldn't make, grow, forage, catch, or kill by your own hand. Perspectives change. Beliefs change. People change. Here are the thoughts and words of a "mountain man" reflecting his own unique, personal experience of life.

"200 Zen Stories: Cultivating Positivity and Inner Peace" takes you on a journey to explore the timeless wisdom of Zen stories. These captivating stories will empower the readers with essential life skills while instilling a sense of joy, mindfulness, and compassion. This book will help children to: - Unlock a greater understanding of themselves and the world around them - Develop resilience, emotional intelligence, and empathy - Cultivate an awareness of the present moment and embrace their emotions with acceptance - Find calm amidst the storms of life - Greater sense of positivity, compassion, and wonder as they navigate the wondrous tapestry of life This book contains 200 captivating Zen stories that will engage young minds, inspire them to reflect on deeper truths, and open doors to profound insights. With simple yet profound narratives, these stories offer invaluable teachings on the nature of existence, the human mind, and the pursuit of inner peace. Embark on this adventure to explore the timeless wisdom of Zen stories!

Design options and planning procedures must be critically examined to ensure that landscapes are created with sensitivity to water quality and management issues as well as overall ecological integrity. Handbook of Water Sensitive Planning and Design presents the history of water as a design and planning element in landscape architecture and describes new interpretations of water management. This text pushes the frontiers of standard water management in new directions, challenging readers into abandoning the comfortable safety of conducting business-as-usual within narrow disciplinary confines, and instead directing views outward to the exciting and incompletely mapped regions of true interdisciplinary water sensitive planning and design. With contributions from renowned practitioners, Part I provides seventeen chapters addressing the subject of site-specific water sensitive design and Part II presents another seventeen chapters focusing on issues relating to the water sensitive planning of riparian buffers and watersheds. In addition, Professor France has provided a "Response" to accompany each chapter, which succinctly underscores the salient features in more detail and emphasizes cross-linking to other chapters in the book. The "Overview" provides a brief road-map to navigate through the section. Finally, the discussion summaries at the end of each section elaborate on past problems, current challenges, and future directions. Handbook of Water Sensitive Planning and Design puts forward the very best of modern water sensitive planning and design and should be required reading for everyone involved in this dynamic and crucial field.

Gong Dong and Vector Architects are in the vanguard of a new generation of Chinese architects who are revealing extraordinary approaches to building and design that marry tradition with an ever-more-thrilling modernism. Gong Dong’s architecture evocatively combines features of the modern with lessons learned from China’s old culture of craftsmanship while giving utmost attention to the experiential qualities of design. Beyond great facility, the firm is celebrated for exploring the possibilities of sustainability and eco-sensitive construction. Recently featured in the exhibition Reuse, Renew, Recycle: Recent Architecture from China at New York’s MoMA, Dong’s work was singled out for the Alila Yangshio Hotel. A readaptation of an old industrial site and former sugar factory near the Chinese city of Guilin, known for its dramatic landscape of precipitous limestone karst hills, the hotel embraces the extraordinary site, with pools that reflect the stunning surrounds, while also offering great comfort and ease to guests. The book presents the firm’s most breathtaking work, from its celebrated Seashore Chapel, which suggests a marriage of the cerebral power of Le Corbusier and the refined magic of Tadao Ando while making a serene and unique statement of its own, to the magical Captain’s House, a renovation of a modernist dwelling set atop a cliff overlooking a fishing village and the sea. This elegantly illustrated and beautifully designed book is the first in English to comprehensively document this exceptionally high quality, quietly rich, and greatly rewarding architecture.

The University of Central Florida has stood at the edges of Orlando for 40 years, a major institution of research, culture, education, and professional development stitched into the fabric of one of the nation's most dynamic and influential metropolitan areas. Conceived in 1963, at the height of America's fascination with the space program and less than an hour from Florida's Space Coast, the school began as Florida Technological University, a vast and remote tract of wild palmettos and swampland that held the promise of a cutting-edge "Space University." But 1963 was the same year that Walt Disney made his fateful fly over Central Florida and chose the location for Walt Disney World, a decision that would ultimately transform the entire region. Florida Tech found itself growing along with the surrounding community in size, prominence, and power into a diverse institution that no one in those early years could have envisioned. Renamed the University of Central Florida in 1979 to better reflect its broad curriculum and its strong marriage with the region, the school has blossomed into the prototype for the modern metropolitan university.

"This book argues that, since transatlantic slavery, patience has been used as a tool of anti-black violence and political exclusion, but shows how during the Civil Rights Movement black artists and activists used theatre to demand "freedom now," staging a radical challenge to this deferral of black freedom and citizenship"--