Human Library 2018

This book attempts to describe the life of a daughter of an immigrant family in the US. The daughter finally realizes that the only way out of immigrant's stress is to handle things one day at a time.

Twenty years ago a small town Catholic boy married a Jewish girl from Boston. Interfaith relationships have special challenges: What will your parents think? What religion(s) will the children be? Should conversion be considered? I will be happy to discuss the path that my wife and I took on this interfaith journey and discuss interfaith relationships familiar to the reader.  

I enlisted in the Marine Corps at 25. Although I didn't know it at the time, there were witch hunts while I was in recruit training. A few years later, as a Drill Instructor, I was expected to enforce NAVINST 1900.9 which remained in effect during "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT). I served in Iraq in 2003, an ordeal for my life partner without access to military family support services. Just 4 years short of retirement, anticipating ongoing deployments, I did not re-enlist. 16 years of honor, courage, and commitment in service to God, country, Corps were enough. It was time to put family first.

Imagine your father casually telling one day, "well I'm not completely a man." It would be weird, right? That one comment led to a girl witnessing the consequences of transgender closer to home than most people ever will, from the visual ways that estrogen affects the body, to the familial implications, to the strange changes in no one thinks will actually occur, like gaining a fashion sense and a love for jewelry. 

This book will share what it was like to navigate working in a male-dominated, Fortune 500 company in the 1980s and how experiences of shame and humiliation were replaced with self-confidence and success by pursuing and completing a degree from F&M.

For thirteen years, I've been taking F&M students to areas of the country that have been destroyed by hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires. What is it like rebuilding homes for those that have lost everything to natural disasters? How do you personally process the scope of a disaster? How can you effectively communicate with those who have lost loved ones, homes and belongings? Why can disasters break down barriers and bring people together?

I am driven to travel and live in strange places. I have lived in places strange to me and where I am often a stranger. This is not recreational travel or tourism, but a year in Bogotá, Colombia, studying at an out-of-state college, two years in Berlin, Germany, more than four years in Charlottesville, VA, many months off-and-on in Kamchatka, Russia, 13 years in Aberdeen, Scotland, over a year in Halle an der Saale, Germany, and now I am new to Lancaster. I grew up in Puget Sound, WA, but I haven't lived more than 3 months at a time there since I turned 18. Now when I am there, I feel like a stranger in the place most would call my hometown.

For seven years, I was involved with the cult of Scientology. My book describes what intrigued me about the religion, what I learned while I was involved, and how I managed to leave. The book also offers hope and inspiration for those plagued by the idea (as I was) that they have wasted years of their lives and can't get them back.

How can I define who I am as a unique individual when I am just another fish in the sea? Learning from my triumphs, disasters, experiences, and mistakes has yielded a strong sense of self. Now all I need to do is balance my sense of self with the overwhelming fact that we are all more alike than unalike.

Ten trash cans. That's how many my household of five people put out at the curb in the year 2017. For several years now, I've strived to get closer to eliminating the garbage can entirely from my life, knowing that I'll never quite get there. In some ways, even though I look like a normal American and my home looks like a normal home, our low-trash endeavors makes our family an oddity in the modern culture.

Straight As? Knows how to play at least one musical instrument? Over-achiever? Not me. Coming to F&M as an international student, this is the story of my first year at the school: how I overcame mental illness and other stigmas.

Meet Mommy Brown: a compassionate and loving woman working to endlessly and unconditionally support her two-year-old son to authentically grow and realize his full potential, and to change the world!

Meet Dean Brown: a thoughtful and energetic woman working (endlessly, it seems!) to support college students to do the same in their own unique ways.

Meet Dean Mommy: a lucky woman who is a Dean and a Mommy at the same time! Being Dean and being Mommy are far from the same, and being Mommy always comes first. It's complicated, but beautiful, and definitely worth the read. This is her story.