Dr. Hugh McTavish Enters Minnesota Governor Race With Innovative ‘Jury Democracy’ Proposal
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In his public declaration of his candidacy, Hugh McTavish, Ph.D., said, “I am running because I want to really create a government that is, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, ‘of the people, by the people’ and ‘for the people.’” He went on to add, “Instead, we have government that is of the elites and the corporations, by the elites and the corporations, and for the elites and the corporations.”
McTavish is a scientist, entrepreneur and author of COVID Lockdown Insanity. He is running for governor of Minnesota with the Independence-Alliance, the successor to the Independence Party that elected Jesse Ventura.
His innovative proposal, Jury Democracy, involves having large, statistically valid juries of 500 to 2,000 randomly selected voters come to the capitol, hear arguments for and against a particular bill or proposal, deliberate on it, and then vote on that one bill or proposal.
According to McTavish, Jury Democracy would impact public debate and transform political power and how the government makes decisions.
“As governor, before I sign any important or controversial bill into law, I will submit it to a citizen jury of at least 500 people,” he added. “If the jury approves the bill, I will sign it into law; if it rejects the bill, I will veto it. Effectively, I will not be governor—WE ALL WILL BE! I will give the power to you!”
A Ph.D. biochemist and immunologist, patent attorney, entrepreneur and author, McTavish has authored 18 refereed scientific journal articles and is the inventor of 21 U.S. patents. He has also written three books: Ending War in Our Lifetime, COVID Lockdown Insanity and Wild Plants of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area. He has started two pharmaceutical companies off his own inventions. He lives near St. Paul, Minnesota. Now he is running for governor of Minnesota, primarily to bring the innovation of Jury Democracy to Minnesota and the world.
Besides hoping to positively impact government, McTavish entered the governor’s race because, in his words, “Everyone’s life matters.” McTavish has been outspoken about the harms of the lockdown response to COVID and how those harms vastly exceeded the benefits, sharing the science behind his claims in his thought-provoking book, COVID Lockdown Insanity (West Fork Press;ISBN-13: 978-1737327110).
For more information about his candidacy, please visit https://www.mctavish4mn.org/, and follow him on Twitter at @McTavish4MN.
Trish Stevens Alex Spencer Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
One Man’s Path to Redemption Leads Through Local Watering Holes
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Jack Current isn’t just hoping to drown his sorrows during his evening pub crawl through downtown Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood; he’s hoping to actually drown — in the Ohio River. But not until he has poured his heart onto paper in the dollar store notebook he’s got with him. Aptly referred to as The Drunk Log, Jack’s notebook contains the secret to his pain, and a bartender with a sixth sense will sneak a peek, just in time.
Author Mark E. Scott’s compelling story of one man’s last hurrah, Drunk Log, invites readers to follow a relatable protagonist who, in the midst of buckling under oppressive guilt, embarks on one last bar crawl before he plans to end his own life.
In his notebook, Jack documents the evening, ruminates on his existence and remembers his 7-year-old nephew, who died exactly a year earlier. It is a loss for which Jack feels responsible — a lapse in judgement for which there is no forgiveness. Jack’s plan is to jump off the scenic suspension bridge spanning the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington, Kentucky.
Drunk Log is a darkly humorous, deeply introspective exploration into one man’s attempt to find peace in the face of unrelenting pain. Told with a fast clip, the entire book covers about 8 hours and deftly avoids becoming an ominous dirge through relatable — and flawed — characters, unexpectedly funny situations, a budding romance and the wobbly balancing act of a man who must remain sober enough to write in his journal and finish what he started, but drunk enough to jump off a bridge.
Readers follow Jack as he begins the evening at his local watering hole, where a gregarious bartender named Aria, with whom he shares a mutual attraction, takes a surreptitious peek at Jack’s journal. Sensing Jack is headed to the same doom that claimed her sister, Aria decides to intervene.
Tracking him down in the middle of a winter storm, Aria finds Jack on the freezing, snowy bridge. Can they emerge from their individual cocoons of loss and suffering, save each other and rewrite their stories?
Drunk Log is the first installment in Scott’s three-part, Day in the Life series, in which the unexpected, twisted saga of Jack and Aria unfolds over a combined period of 24 hours.
Born in the small manufacturing town of Galion, Ohio, author Mark E. Scott lived in various burgs in Ohio and Michigan before joining the Navy and spending four years traveling the world aboard the USS Mount Whitney. Upon returning home to southwest Ohio, he enrolled at Miami University and completed a degree in Education, only to become a banker soon thereafter. Scott now lives happily in a condo in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati. In his free time, he enjoys writing, finding new and creative ways of tricking his children into answering their phones, and anything related to travel and outdoors, of late including tumbling down snow covered mountains while dragging otherwise perfectly good skis behind him.
For more information, please visit www.markescottauthor.com, or connect with him on Instagram (markescottauthor), Facebook (@markescottauthor) or Twitter (@MarkEScott3).
Drunk Log Publisher: Speaking In Volumes, LLC ISBN: 978-1645405559 EISBN: 978-1645405542 Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Rylee Cooper Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Angel Faces Retreats Facilitate Emotional Healing for Women Disfigured by Trauma
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Since 2003, the nonprofit Angel Faces has helped transform the lives of adolescents and young women who have suffered severe, permanent scars and disfigurements from burn injuries and traumatic events through intensive, residential retreats, and ongoing support.
Founder Lesia Cartelli was severely burned by a natural gas explosion when she was just 9 years old, and as an adult, she recognized the psychosocial needs of adolescent girls and young women with disfigurements.
The next retreat takes place June 11-16 on a private compound (courtesy of an anonymous donor) on lake Winnipesaukee in beautiful Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
The theme for this retreat is “Let it Roll,” and sessions led by licensed mental health professionals will focus on managing healthy relationships, boundaries, post traumatic growth and understanding the impact of trauma on our lives.
Professional artist Kate Lemay will lead an art project, “Let It Scroll,” during which participants will create beautiful scrolls on canvas decorated with both words of forgiveness for their past selves and motivational messages for their budding, future selves.
Additional program elements include yoga, climbing and journaling, plus one-on-one instruction from professionals in the cosmetics industry to teach the women how to minimize scarring while enhancing their individual beauty.
“Our six-day retreat is a unique gathering of women who have been left marred by severe trauma (abuse, car crashes, bonfires, explosions, war and house fires) to find the courage to heal,” Cartelli said. “We encourage the participants to not waste their pain, and to use their trauma as a gift to discover their resilience and strength. Time at the retreat is inspiring for attendees and those who are privy to volunteer.”
Angel Faces Founder Lesia S. Cartelli has witnessed and experienced the struggle with social interactions, boundaries, and self-esteem issues that plague adolescent girls and young women with scars. In her 40 years of experience in developing educational and psychosocial programs supporting trauma victims, she became aware of the intense need for a more in-depth program. She created Angel Faces to inspire and empower adolescent girls and young women with burn/trauma injuries to reach their optimum potential and develop meaningful relationships with themselves, their families and their communities.
Cartelli is also the author of Heart of Fire (Carlyle Publishing; ISBN-13: 978-0990430711), in which she shares the details of her own traumatic experience and the path that led to her founding of Angel Faces.
For more information and a schedule of 2022 retreats, please visit www.angelfaces.com, or follow the organization on Instagram and Twitter at @angelfacesinc.
Trish Stevens Beverly Moore Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)
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Counseling is a significant aspect of pastoring, and marriage counseling is the most common form of counseling for many clergy. To address the needs of husbands who come to him for marriage counseling, Pastor Scott LaPierre says the first thing he looks at is the man’s relationship with Christ.
“Our relationship with our wives, our relationship with our children, is a reflection or outpouring of our relationship with Christ,” La Pierre said in a recent interview. “And it’s our relationship with Christ that we need to draw on at those times when we’re upset.”
In his new book, Your Marriage God’s Way, LaPierre distills lessons from scripture, carefully examining the principles for building a strong, biblical marriage—one in which your relationship with Christ brings guidance and blessing into your relationship with your spouse. “God is the author of marriage. He designed the roles and responsibilities for husbands and wives,” LaPierre writes in his book. “He knows what couples need so they can experience healthy, joyful, Christ-centered relationships, and He provided the principles in the Bible.”
LaPierre gives readers the tools to:
Understand the unique roles and responsibilities of husbands and wives
Recognize and resolve conflicts with a heart of hope and compassion
Follow God’s worthy command to love and cherish your spouse unconditionally
A companion workbook is also available (LaPierre’s Your Marriage God’s Way Workbook) to help couples apply biblical principles to their own marriage.
The workbook aims to help couples:
Understand the unique roles God has given each person
Identify ways to better help, encourage, and support each other
Make serving God the focal point of the marriage
“Let’s journey together, with the Bible as our guide, to experience the blessings of a Christ-centered relationship,” LaPierre writes. “Whether you’re at the beginning of your journey or you’ve been on the road together for years, Your Marriage God’s Way will provide the helpful and encouraging insights you need to experience marriage as God intends it.”
About the Author Scott LaPierre is the senior pastor of Woodland Christian Church in Woodland, WA, an author, and conference speaker. He holds an MA in Biblical Studies from Liberty University. Scott and his wife, Katie, have nine children, and they are passionate homeschooling advocates. Scott is a former schoolteacher and Army officer.
To learn more about Pastor Scott LaPierre, please visit www.scottlapierre.org, or follow him on Twitter (@PastorWCC), Instagram (@pastorwcc) or Facebook (@SctottLaPierreMinistries).
Your Marriage God’s Way: A Biblical Guide to a Christ-Centered Relationship Publisher: Harvest House Publishers ISBN-10: 0736983961 ISBN-13: 978-0736983969 Available from Amazon.com
Your Marriage God’s Way Workbook Publisher: Harvest House Publishers ISBN-10: 0736983988 ISBN-13: 978-0736983983 Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Mandy Sullivan Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
And Suddenly Life Will Never Be the Same: Almost Like Praying a Contemporary Family Drama
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What would happen if a suburban woman with a hard-as-nails façade and a detailed life plan was suddenly saddled with caring for a 6-year-old girl from the Bronx?
Such is the dilemma facing Dolores Farrell in Almost Like Praying, the intriguing new novel from author Joel Samberg. But the 6-year-old girl is just the tip of Dolores’ family-centered iceberg. When readers first meet her, she is a woman with a future all planned out: She’ll marry an attorney, have sons who will become attorneys, daughters who will become patrons of the arts, and live in the shadow of Harvard University, thereby continuing her privileged, purebred Irish-Catholic legacy.
Instead, Dolores must watch as each of her children adopts a lifestyle quite different from what she had envisioned. One daughter becomes a waitress, another a shock jock. One son becomes a cop (a troubled one at that), another a cartoonist. Much to his mother’s dismay, the cartoonist is also missing a leg due to a terrible childhood accident. That, of course, had not been part of Dolores’ original plan.
Almost Like Praying, which fictionalizes some real thoughts and memories, is told through a trilogy of stories reconstructed by a curious journalist who, as a boy, lived across the street from the family at the heart of the book. One day from his old bedroom window, the journalist sees Dolores on her front step hugging a dark-skinned little girl named Maria, and smiling—something he feels the grim-faced Dolores would never do. That’s what prompts him to research and write the stories.
“The novel sprung from my own roots,” Samberg said. “Growing up on Long Island, one of my best friends had a mother who to me seemed humorless and severe. I had always wondered about her. She became Dolores. Also, whenever my family drove through the Bronx, I’d look at the ramshackle apartment buildings and wonder how the kids who lived there would fare in my own middle-class neighborhood. One of them became Maria.”
Featuring flawed, relatable characters, Almost Like Praying offers a compelling message that likely will resonate with readers everywhere.
Author Joel Samberg decided to become a writer as a boy. He wrote a screenplay when he was 12 and sent it to MGM, and although the studio turned it down, an executive’s encouraging note suggested that he never give up on his dream to be a writer. Two years later, his English teacher sent a nasty note home to his parents falsely accusing him of plagiarizing a book report because she said it was too well-written for an eighth-grader. That settled it: from that point on, he has never given up.
Samberg has written for dozens of magazines and has published seven fiction and nonfiction books, including Some Kind of Lonely Clown: The Music, Memory, and Melancholy Lives of Karen Carpenter.
Almost Like Praying Publisher: Black Rose Writing (http://blackrosewriting.com) Release Date: April 28, 2022 ISBN-10: 1685130097 ISBN-13: 978-1685130091 Available from Amazon.com, Black Rose Writing and other online booksellers.
Trish Stevens Parker Wilson Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Protests, Blockages, Threats of War: What Happened to Freedom? Dr. Pieter Noomen’s Website Offers Guidance for a Troubled World
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Long before he died in 2019, Dr. Pieter Noomen explored deeply the meaning of life, death, freedom and so many other topics that the writings on his website will continue to enlighten and inspire readers for decades. In a time when mass protests and threats of war fill our daily news, his musings on freedom seem starkly meaningful.
Many of these protests focus on the freedom to decide for yourself what you will inject into your body or put on your face. But what about the freedom of others not to be impacted by decisions you make that might endanger them? It’s a slippery slope to be sure.
On his website, www.wordsforall.org, Dr. Noomen writes:
“’Yes’ a free will, ‘no’ a free will, argued the sages of all ages. Like they did, it does in me. I vacillate, how much am I free? By my logic, no answers do fit. Yet freedom is, and that is it. It features as essence and substance in all life’s creatures. You see that we are free to even choose our own slavery?” He also wrote that “all living is based on free participation.” Freedom is embraced in many of the world’s nations, but not all, and the chaos of early 2022 may echo for many years to come. How can we make sense of it all and find some semblance of inner and outer peace?
Visitors on www.wordsforall.org can explore Dr. Noomen’s comprehensive collection of vivid experiences and wisdom drawn from the communications he shared with what he called a “spiritual presence.” He grew to believe that, either directly or indirectly, all life stems from one common source, and when we can reconnect with that source, we reach the highest level of existence. And perhaps more importantly, he believed that being in direct contact with the ALL of existence is possible for anyone and everyone.
In essence, we’re all in this together, and the path forward starts with accepting that. As Dr. Noomen wrote, “Let it sink in that you are part of the oneness of all. You’re one of its constituents.”
Born in the Netherlands, Pieter Noomen completed doctoral studies in theology and pastoral psychology at the Free University of Amsterdam and became senior minister of three Protestant churches. Later, he worked as a psychotherapist and as a staff member of a Los Angeles metropolitan church, working in mental health fields like suicide prevention and hospice.
An example from Dr. Noomen’s Wisdoms of the Week from his website:
“If today all people decided to drop negative behavior, and our societies would become peaceful for all, we still face that nature won’t follow the change. It will remain violent at will, not caring about our human needs. In other words, the brokenness and imperfections of life do not depend on our human behavior. The roots of that go deeper. Our earth and its potential for carrying life is put together as a faulty product. Any hope for fundamentally changing the world? No! Any hope for substantially changing people? Yes! When we as individuals connect with the Real, the full, Reality.”
Trish Stevens Gloria Gonzalez Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 281.333.3507 Main [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
Story of Precocious Ballerina Sparks Joie de Vivre in the Hearts of Young Readers
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With a turn of her tutu and a playful plié, precocious 6-year-old ballerina Lilly Nilly dances her way into readers’ hearts with a joie de vivre that will entertain and inspire kids and adults alike in the delightful new children’s book, Pardon My French – It’s the Language of Ballet: The Adventures of Lilly Nilly.
From the creative mind of real-life former NYC-based dancer and choreographer Nancy Paris, Pardon My French takes young readers inside the mind of a spunky, determined young dance student whose self-appointed mission is to figure out what the heck ballet –– and coincidentally life –– are all about.
Lilly Nilly sees the world in a unique way and delivers her humorous, offbeat observations with childlike honesty. She wears her curiosity on her sleeve and asks burning questions like, “Why can’t you hang upside down on a ballet barre if it looks just like an ordinary bar?” Or, “If you’re going to travel in a carpool, should you wear a bathing suit?”
“Young readers will find Lilly’s stories funny and very relatable, especially if they are ballet students themselves,” Paris said. “Adults will find her sharp wit and strong-willed spirit a charming reminder of just how empowering a joyful approach to life can be.”
Pardon My French – It’s the Language of Ballet is complete with illustrations that only Lilly Nilly could have drawn — with a little help from Paris, of course, who used her own experiences as a professional dancer and teacher to inform her narrative. Her mission, Paris said, is to encourage all readers to trust their instincts, seek their own answers, and be kind to all.
“I want people to know that although it was written as a children’s book, I always had an adult audience in mind,” Paris added. “And — it’s funny!”
Author Nancy Paris is an alumna of The Juilliard School and has performed professionally across the U.S. and Canada. As a dancemaker, she has choreographed industrials and private events in New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Palm Springs and Puerto Rico. Most of the incidents in her stories are based on personal experience, with the names changed to protect the innocent.
Paris lives in Manhattan with her husband, Charles Yurick, and loves writing and drawing because she can do it sitting down! Pardon My French is the first of at least three books in The Adventures of Lilly Nilly series.
For more information, please visit www.lillynilly.com, or connect with Paris on Facebook at @adventures.of.lilly.nilly.
Pardon My French – It’s the Language of Ballet: The Adventures of Lilly Nilly ISBN-10: 0578316889 ISBN-13: 978-0578316888 Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Julie Henderson Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
