PreTeena: May 7 – May 13, 2018
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected]
A Soft-Shelled Mama Who Doesn’t Seem to Care…
The Weekend Wilderness Feature: Every Saturday Images of Nature
By David Churchill Barrow
Submit your photographs of nature and the outdoor life to [email protected] to participate in this weekly feature exploring the natural world.
What To Do When Your Girlfriend Is Secretly a Warrior In Service to a Demon?
Discover the fantastic fantasy of Sidequest, the new novel from Frank J. Fleming
By Frank Fleming
He dazzled you with the science fiction adventure Superego, Liberty Island’s debut title. Now Frank Fleming is back with a fresh, innovative take on fantasy. Order Sidequest today, now available on Amazon.
On Making Caviar from Bull Crap: 4 Book Recommendations for Ben Rhodes
By Roy Griffis
There was once an aspiring writer named Ben Rhodes, “in the second year of the M.F.A. program at N.Y.U., writing short stories about losers in garden apartments and imagining that soon he would be published in literary magazines, acquire an agent and produce a novel by the time he turned 26.” This wunderkind ended up as the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, using his creative gifts to the service of communicating/selling Barack Obama’s vision to the world, among his accomplishments “Rhodes strategized and ran the successful Iran-deal messaging campaign, helped negotiate the opening of American relations with Cuba after a hiatus of more than 50 years and has been a co-writer of all of Obama’s major foreign-policy speeches.”
That is what used to be known as running in fast company. But all good things have to end, and Mr. Rhodes is in need of a new gig. Since it’s possible that term of public service dulled his creative abilities, here’s a handy list of books that might help him rediscover his mojo, and to follow his true calling.
Boy Scouts: It Was Fun While It Lasted
“A boy is not a sit-down animal.” – Robert Baden-Powell, Founder of the Boy Scouts
By David Churchill Barrow
Baden-Powell’s military career was controversial, but that was inevitable, given that his wars were not against the conventional armies of Western European nations, but against Matabele, Ashanti and Zulu tribesmen, as well as the resourceful and tough-as-nails Dutch Boers of South Africa, who were pioneers in irregular warfare. (Note: kommando is a Boer word). It sickened him to see young lads from the slums of Liverpool and Manchester get killed far from home, for want of simple skills like reading a compass, following or disguising a trail, camouflage, etc., and so he wrote manuals such as Reconnaissance and Scouting and Aids to Scouting. Upon returning home, he was surprised to find these works popular with boys and various boyhood organizations, and so he converted them more directly for this purpose with his seminal work, Scouting for Boys, and thus the Boy Scouts were born.
Photo by Internet Archive Book Images
Episode 4: The Pee Tape
The New Adventures of Justin T. Fairchild, Social Justice Warrior
By Curtis Edmonds
I walked into my home office and saw the external hard drive on my desk, where it had sat for the better part of two weeks. The hard drive had one file on it: a video that showed Donald Trump engaged in urine-soaked relations with four Russian prostitutes. It was the most powerful weapon that progressives had to dismantle the Trump regime, and I had no idea what to do with it.
Oh, sure, I could have posted it on Facebook. In retrospect, that may have been the smart thing to do. The only problem with that was that it would be posted under my name, and that was the last thing that I wanted. Because of the role that I played in the 2016 primaries, I had been warned by progressive elements in the FBI not to take a visible role in the resistance. Posting the pee tape to social media would be about as visible as such things get. My family and I would immediately become a target for incandescent white supremacist rage. I couldn’t let that happen.
New Fantasy Fiction: Innocence and Experience
An origin story for a hero of an epic-in-progress…
By Jamie K. Wilson
Across the green, a scream shattered the morning stillness. Bayliss’s hand slipped, his blade neatly severing the delicate swan’s leg he had carved out of an oak bole, cutting deep into the meaty part of his left hand.
It was Lysele. She screamed again, a high sobbing sound. Bayliss dropped the wood, jammed his bleeding hand into his rough woolen apron pocket, and ran, across the green, past the blacksmith’s, the well, the taverna.
By the time he arrived, half the village was there, elderly Fran holding Lysele as she sobbed. Lysele’s husband Artos stared blankly at the south-facing window, the cheerful flowers below it trampled and fouled. Bayliss gazed at the line of slime from the garden’s edge down to the undefined beginnings of the swamp a hundred yards or more to the south, where ancient cypress trees draped black branches into the murky waters. For a moment, he did not understand.
University Bookman Interviews Adam Bellow About Liberty Island
Mark Judge inquires about “Conservative Fictions, Fictional Conservatism?”
By Liberty Island Staff
Liberty Island’s CEO describes the mission, the new books, and the website relaunch. Click here for the full transcript and here to download the 27-minute audio interview.
The Best Books to Civilize the Boyhood Barbarians
A Series Conclusion: Rites of Passage in Classical Literature for Boys
By David Churchill Barrow
“Every generation western civilization is invaded by barbarians…. We call them children.” – Hannah Arendt, philosopher.
There is a trick to civilizing little boys; and it lies in recognizing that they are just that – little boys. Trite though that may seem, getting this right is the only way to preserve western civilization. Alarmist, you say? Consider history.
Click here for Part 1, here for Part 2, here for Part 3, and here for Part 4 in the series on the best books for boys.
PreTeena: April 30 – May 6, 2018
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected]
