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Essence Magazine's book features for April 2015, selected to catch some Spring Fever — featuring Attica Locke, Eric Jerome Dickey, Angela Flournoy, Tracey Baptiste, Tracy K. Smith:
Pleasantville (Jay Porter Series) by Attica Locke
Harper, April 21, 2015, Hardcover
In this sophisticated thriller, lawyer Jay Porter, hero of Attica Locke's bestseller Black Water Rising, returns to fight one last case, only to become embroiled once again in a dangerous game of shadowy politics and a witness to how far those in power are willing to go to win.
Fifteen years after the events of Black Water Rising, Jay Porter is struggling to cope with catastrophic changes in his personal life and the disintegration of his environmental law practice. His victory against Cole Oil is still the crown jewel of his career, even if he hasn't yet seen a dime thanks to appeals. But time has taken its toll. Tired and restless, hes ready to quit.
When a girl goes missing on Election Night, 1996, in the neighborhood of Pleasantville — a hamlet for upwardly mobile blacks on the north side of Houston — Jay, a single father, is deeply disturbed. He's been representing Pleasantville in the wake of a chemical fire, and the case is dragging on, raising doubts about his ability.
The missing girl was a volunteer for one of the local mayoral candidates, and her disappearance complicates an already heated campaign. When the nephew of one of the candidates, a Pleasantville local, is arrested, Jay reluctantly finds himself serving as a defense attorney. With a man's life and his own reputation on the line, Jay is about to try his first murder in a case that will also put an electoral process on trial, exposing the dark side of power and those determined to keep it.
One Night by Eric Jerome Dickey
Dutton, April 21, 2015, Hardcover
For one night, a couple checks in to an upscale hotel. The pair seem unlikely companions, from opposing strata of society, but their attraction is palpable to all who observe them — or overhear their cries of passion. In the course of twelve hours, con games, erotic interludes, jealousy, violence, and murder swirl around them. Will they part ways in bliss, in sorrow, or in death?
Filled with all the hallmarks of an Eric Jerome Dickey bestseller — erotic situations, edge-of-your-seat twists and turns, and fun, believable relationships — One Night will delight Dickey's existing fans and lure countless new ones.
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April 14, 2015, Hardcover
The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone — and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts — and shapes — their family's future.
The Turner House brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. It's a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home.
The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste
Algonquin Young Readers, April 28, 2015, Hardcover
The jumbies are coming!
Corinne La Mer isn't afraid of anything. Not scorpions, not the boys who tease her, and certainly not jumbies. She knows that jumbies aren't real; they're just creatures parents make up to frighten their children. But on All Hallows' Eve, Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden woods. Those shining yellow eyes that follow her to the edge of the trees, they couldn't belong to a jumbie. Or could they?
Corinne begins to notice odd occurrences after that night. First she spots a beautiful stranger speaking to the town witch at the market. Then this same beauty, called Severine, turns up at Corinne's house, cooking dinner for her father. Danger is in the air. Sure enough, bewitching Corinne's father is the first step in Severine's plan to claim the entire island for the jumbies. Corinne must call on her courage and her friends and ancient magic to stop Severine and to save her island home.
Ordinary Light: A memoir by Tracy K. Smith
Knopf, March 31, 2015, Hardcover
From the dazzlingly original Pulitzer Prize-winning poet: a quietly potent memoir that explores coming-of-age and the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, faith, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter.
The youngest of five children, Tracy K. Smith was raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But just as Tracy is about to leave home for college, her mother is diagnosed with cancer, a condition she accepts as part of God's plan. Ordinary Light is the story of a young woman struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America.
In lucid, clear prose, Smith interrogates her childhood in suburban California, her first collision with independence at Harvard, and her Alabama-born parents' recollections of their own youth in the Civil Rights era. These dizzying juxtapositions — of her family's past, her own comfortable present, and the promise of her future — will in due course compel Tracy to act on her passions for love and "ecstatic possibility," and her desire to become a writer.
Shot through with exquisite lyricism, wry humor, and an acute awareness of the beauty of everyday life, Ordinary Light is a gorgeous kaleidoscope of self and family, one that skillfully combines a child's and teenager's perceptions with adult retrospection. Here is a universal story of being and becoming, a classic portrait of the ways we find and lose ourselves amid the places we call home.


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Demand-Driven Supply Chains: Using Lean Principles to Drive Innovation
A joint venture with the Penn State Smeal College of Business' Center for Supply Chain Research.
The concept of Lean is nothing new; however, applying Lean principles in an extended supply chain context is new territory for a tried and true practice. Penn State Executive Programs is now delivering this program as a "custom-only" development opportunity for organizations that want end-to-end top performance from their supply chains.
Program Objectives
Participants learn a systemic approach for applying Lean thinking to supply chain challenges for improved work teams, elimination of waste, and speed and efficiency. Topics include:
- Lean principles, building blocks, and value stream mapping
- Lean and Enterprise Supply Chains
- Rapid Replenishment industry case study
- Simulation exercise for applied learning
Who Should Attend
Demand-Driven Supply Chains: Using Lean Principles to Drive Innovation is designed for all managers and executives interested in improving their ability to compete in a global marketplace more effectively. Representative titles of past participants include: vice president, director or manager of logistics, purchasing, supply chains, operations, distribution or materials management.
Program Content
Lean Thinking: Principles and Building Blocks
- Focus on value; identify waste
- Elements of a Lean system
- Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and analysis
- JIT, Jidoka, and critical Lean tools
Lean and Manufacturing
- Extended supply chain (scope)
- Interpretation of tools
- Examples of Lean projects
Lean and Enterprise Supply Chains
- Improvement within supply chain functions
- Integrated SCM (within the enterprise)
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Collaborative product design and management
Extended Lean Across the Supply Chain
- Lean with customers and suppliers
- Demand planning
- Supply sourcing and relationship management
- Data management synchronization, visibility, and security
- Joint opportunities for Lean
- Customer collaboration and planned order systems
Implementing Lean in the Supply Chain
- Effective Leadership Models for personal and organizational change
- Relationship between logistics and customer satisfaction
- Methodologies for measuring effectiveness
Lean Simulation
Demand-Driven Supply Chains includes a comprehensive simulation that drives home the power of an effective Lean system. Participant teams will assume the role of a prime contractor and three sub-contractors working to complete a 30-month government contract to build and deliver 15 F35V Strike Fighter Aircraft. Completed in three distinct rounds, this unique simulation illustrates phases of an organization's transformation.
"Probably the best executive supply chain course I've ever attended. The right combination of theory, practical implementation, and test cases from industry. Incorporating speakers that have implemented these steps was valuable in understanding the importance of these tools and how to implement them in our own companies. The faculty and staff did a great job in engaging the group. I gained considerable knowledge about how Lean can positively impact supply chain."
--Pedro Menendez
Vice President, Global Supply Chain
USG Building Systems
Faculty Directors
Mr. David Demers, Adjunct Professor, Smeal College of Business, Penn State; and Managing Director, Avicon Learning Resources
Mr. David Veech, Program Faculty Co-Director; Executive Director, Institute for Lean Systems
Faculty Leaders
Mr. Norman Aggon, Instructor of Operations & Supply Chain Management and Assistant Department Head, Smeal College of Business, Penn State
Mr. Eugene Hamill, Senior Director, Customer Service and Logistics, Kraft Foods, Inc.
Mr. John Silva, Director of Electric Systems Quality, UTC Aerospace Systems Group
Custom program fees are based on a variety of factors, including level of customization, class size, breadth of faculty, delivery location, and amenities provided.
To speak with someone about this custom program for your organization, connect with us.
Related Programs
- Essentials of Supply Chain Management covers topics for building maximum efficiency through better reporting and measurement systems.
- Processes and Tools for Supply Chain Success covers the latest technology and methods for defining, analyzing, and making recommendations for performance improvements.
- Achieving Supply Chain Transformation covers the critical elements of adaptive supply chain management: strategy, people, process, IT, and assessment.
- Developing Strategic Supply Chain Leaders covers developing supply chain systems that support organizational strategy.
- Aligning Supply Chain Organizations provides the tools and learning, based on practical applications, to start or improve your collaboration initiatives.
- Introduction to Supply Chain Analytics covers data analysis strategies relative to the supply chain to gain a better understanding of the extent to which objectives are being achieved.
- Strategic Procurement and Purchasing develops knowledge of basic principles in purchasing and the drivers that create competitiveness.
- Forecasting and Inventory Management strengthens the understanding of foundational concepts and the contextual knowledge to drive improvements in inventory management.
- Fulfillment Operations Management provides an understanding of fulfillment operations from forecasting thru delivery.
- Transportation Operations and Sourcing covers common terminology and methods to effectively manage transportation operations, source carriers, and third party providers to reduce transportation cost and maintain or increase service levels.

subset: commoncrawl


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Creed's Scott Stapp releasing solo album in November
Listen to Scott Stapp on iHeartRadio | Listen to Creed on iHeartRadio
Creed frontman Scott Stapp says he wants to "take a mess and turn it into a message" with his upcoming solo album, Proof of Life.
Stapp calls the record the most meaningful of his career. He says it chronicles his journey, struggles and all, and is the most honest record he's ever written. Stapp says his fans have often told him that his music has helped get them through the worst of times, but "Proof of Life" is the first time he's ever had a "cathartic experience" listening to his own work.
The new album is due out November 5th, while the first single, "Slow Suicide," will be released on October 8th.
Proof of Life will be Stapp's second solo album after 2005's The Great Divide. In the interim, he reunited with Creed and the band released Full Circle in 2009. Stapp also released his memoir, "Sinner's Creed," last year.
Photo Credit Getty Images


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St. Kate's Newswire :: St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN :: News and Events
Leadership expert, author to speak Friday at St. Kate's
"If we know who we are and what we stand for, we can lead with spirit," says Margaret Wheatley, a noted leadership expert and author who will speak at St. Catherine University on Friday, April 20.
The event -- co-sponsored by the Loyola Spirituality Center and the Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality -- will be held in Rauenhorst Ballroom, Coeur de Catherine, from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Click here for registration information.
Wheatley has been engaged as a leadership speaker, writer and consultant since 1973. Her six books include Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time (2005), Perseverance (2010) and, her best-known work, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World (1992), which has been published in 18 languages.
"Margaret Wheatley is one of the most significant thought leaders alive today in the areas of new thinking about organizations and people," says Paula King, dean of the School of Business and Leadership at St. Kate's. "Her influence on organizational development, the importance of resilience and perseverance in difficult times, and new options for organizing both locally and globally has changed the way leaders and organizational theorists think about organizing."
A former Peace Corps volunteer, Wheatley has worked on all continents, earned a doctorate from Harvard in administration, planning and social policy, and taught at Brigham Young University and Cambridge College. But she praises her liberal arts education as laying the foundation for her work.
"No one discipline, institution or specialization can answer the questions that now confront us," Wheatley writes on her website. "We all must draw from many different perspectives to reweave the world."
The cost for Friday's program is $50. Books will be available for signing and purchase.
See also: Leadership, Liberal Arts


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Results 1 to 1 of 1
Thread: Marriage summed up!
Marriage summed up!
A fellow has his wedding tackle mangled in a work accident and is rushed to hospital where he is told by the surgeon that his member is too badly damaged to be saved.
The surgeon then goes on to say that with the latest technology they can build him a new one, but the replacements are not cheap. It will cost you $10,000 for the small, $15,000 for the medium, or $20,000 for the large.
The patient says he'll have to phone his wife to see which one they can afford so the surgeon waits while the call is made.
After the patient hangs up, the surgeon says "well, what's it to be, small, medium, or large"?
The downcast looking patient says "none....we're going to get a new kitchen".I've learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake.
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