Connie Cronley – författare
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3 produkter
3 produkter
Light and Variable
A Year of Celebrations, Holidays, Recipes, and Emily Dickinson
Häftad, Engelska, 2006
244 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
In Light and Variable, the reader is invited to join celebrated Oklahoma essayist and commentator Connie Cronley on a delightful romp through the calendar year. Honest, unpretentious, and laced with self-deprecating humor, the essays in this book revolve around special holidays or events, some of which you may never have heard of - Festival of Sleep Day, National Failures Day, and Blame Someone Else Day.Against a backdrop of celebrations and seasons, Cronley marvels at subjects close to her heart: siblings from outer space, small towns, champion whopper-telling ex-husbands, rascally cats, rescued dogs, deviled eggs, know-it-all hair dressers, church squabbles, books and authors, gardening efforts run aground, flocks of starlings, women's history, cowgirls, and her own Cherokee heritage. Woven throughout are fragments of Emily Dickinson's poetry; a few essays about food (not surprising from a former restaurant critic), including a history of celery in North America; a salute to rhubarb; and recipes from Frank Sinatra and Oprah Winfrey.Who knew that Oklahoma was such a magical place? Cronley introduces us to Oklahoma celebrities: movie stars Jennifer Jones and Tony Randall, glamorous café society singer Lee Wiley, champion poker player Bobby Baldwin, and one of the state's legendary American Indian ballerinas (and the author's personal friend) Moscelyne Larkin.Grab your hat and step into Connie Cronley's special world, where the mood, like Oklahoma weather, is always light and variable.
337 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
""Apartheid South Africa was on fire around me.""So begins the memoir of Career Foreign Service Officer Edward J. Perkins, the first black United States ambassador to South Africa. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan gave him the unparalleled assignment: dismantle apartheid without violence.As he fulfilled that assignment, Perkins was scourged by the American press, despised by the Afrikaner government, hissed at by white South African citizens, and initially boycotted by black South African revolutionaries, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu. His advice to President-elect George H. W. Bush helped modify American policy and hasten the release of Nelson Mandela and others from prison.Perkins's up-by-your-bootstraps life took him from a cotton farm in segregated Louisiana to the white elite Foreign Service, where he became the first black officer to ascend to the top position of director general.This is the story of how one man turned the page of history.
260 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
How can women wear diamonds when babies cry for bread?" Kate Barnard demanded in one of the incendiary stump speeches for which she was well known. In A Life on Fire, Connie Cronley tells the story of Catherine Ann "Kate" Barnard (1875-1930), a fiery political reformer and the first woman elected to state office in Oklahoma, as commissioner of charities and corrections in 1907-almost fifteen years before women won the right to vote in the United States. Born to hardscrabble settlers on the Nebraska prairie, Barnard committed her energy, courage, and charismatic oratory to the cause of Progressive reform and became a political powerhouse and national celebrity.As a champion of the poor, workers, children, the imprisoned, and the mentally ill, Barnard advocated for compulsory education, prison reform, improved mental health treatment, and laws against child labor. Before statehood, she stumped across the Twin Territories to unite farmers and miners into a powerful political alliance. She also helped write Oklahoma’s Progressive constitution, creating what some heralded as “a new kind of state.”But then she took on the so-called “Indian Question.” Defending Native orphans against a conspiracy of graft that reached from Oklahoma to Washington, D.C., she uncovered corrupt authorities and legal guardians stealing oil, gas, and timber rights from Native Americans’ federal allotments. In retaliation, legislators and grafters closed ranks and defunded her state office. Broken in health and heart, she left public office and died a recluse. She remains, however, a riveting figure in Oklahoma history, a fearless activist on behalf of the weak and helpless.