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Meet Emma!


In 1998, when Emma Mebane was in the first grade at Western Elementary School in Geneva, Illinois, her class got to the spot in the curriculum where they needed to learn shapes. As you might guess, there were kids who learned faster than others, and Emma was not among that faster group. But what she lacked in speed, she more than made up in spirit, humor, and goodwill.

The final product of Emma’s class unit on shapes was her first published book, lovingly colored by hand on lined tablet paper. She titled it, simply, A Book Abot Chaps. In first-grade language, chaps is pronounced shapes. So, this book is about (abot) shapes (chaps) and, with a brush that is stark yet bold and bright, Emma shares her representations of eight different chaps, including the carkol, the dimind, and the scwar.

Several years before Emma’s death in 2011, she found her original Book Abot Chaps – a bit tattered and torn – in one of her mother’s “save” piles. With no pride of authorship, she howled at her own goofs in spelling and presentation and shared the book with others, who were equally amused.

As a tribute to Emma, and in thanking her for showing us how important it is to laugh at ourselves, we wanted to share Emma’s work even more broadly, and we officially published A Book Abot Chaps within just a few weeks of her death. We think Emma probably likes the idea of being an Amazon author on the topic of chaps.

Anyway, meet Emma … and a few of her friends.

Of course, if you really want to get to know Emma, you should read Tomorrow Comes – a beautifully rendered story about Emma by Emma’s mom (Donna).

SEEK TO FIND

AMAZON REVIEW OF ‘COMMON GOSPEL’

AMAZON REVIEW OF ‘COMMON GOSPEL’

First Amazon Review of 'The Common Gospel: The Ultimate Testament to Jesus the Messiah'

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WRITINGS ON THE WALL

  • Man’s word is God in man. –Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Idylls of the King,” The Coming of Arthur
  • Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. –Horace, Epistles
  • Choice word and measured phrase… above the reach of ordinary men. –William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence
  • “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • Word is a shadow of deed. –Democritus
  • The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didn’t require any. –Russell Baker, Growing Up
  • I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long Words Bother me. –Alan Alexander Milne, Willie-the-Pooh
  • In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. –The Common Gospel, “Eternal Word”
  • How long a time lies in one little word! Such is the breath of kings. –Shakespeare, King Richard II
  • A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. –John Steinbeck, “In Awe of Words”
  • The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. –Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review
  • And many a word, at random spoken, may soothe a wound or heart that’s broken. –Sir Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles
  • The writer doesn’t want success ... The writer wants to leave a scratch on the wall of oblivion that someone a hundred or a thousand years later will see. Kilroy was here. –William Faulkner, Faulkner in the University
  • Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it. –Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review. –James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics
  • The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. –Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
  • How many verses have I thrown into the fire because the one peculiar word, the wanted most, was irrecoverably lost. –Walter Savage Landor, Verses Why Burnt
  • Prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot. Lend me your pen to write a word. –Au Clair de la Lune
  • All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. –Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
  • Words are like leaves and, where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
  • Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, and universal darkness buries all. –Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
  • So is a word better than a gift. –Apocrypha
  • Life's like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. –Jim Henson, The Muppet Movie
  • Honeyed words like bees, gilded and sticky, with a little sting. –Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Pretty Words
  • To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality. –Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Traité Elémentaire de Chimie
  • Sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts –never to heaven go. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • Omit needless words. –William Strunk, Jr, The Elements of Style
  • Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your action. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. –Anonymous
  • Good words are worth much … and cost little. –George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
  • In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature. –Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
  • Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact. It is silence which isolates. –Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  • It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some irradiating word. –Alexander Smith, “Dreamthorp,” On the Writing of Essays

CLICK HERE to see these writings on the wall in a larger size.

Printing in Perspective

Printing in Perspective
Your life is made up of two dates and a dash. Make the most of the dash.

Make the most of your life - your dash! - and share what you learn with others.

The kingdom of God does not come with observation ... for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. -Jesus the Messiah. The Common Gospel ("Final Journey)

LEARN ABOUT ‘LEGACY DOCUMENTS’

LEARN ABOUT ‘LEGACY DOCUMENTS’

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