Friday Finds

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by Should Be Reading

Berried in Chocolate: How I Built a Multimillion-Dollar Business by Doing What I Love to Do and How You Can Too With no business education or experience, twenty-five-year-old Fitzpatrick had only a $1,500 cash advance and a passion for chocolate-dipped strawberries when she started a home-based business. Today, she is the founder of a multimillion-dollar company and the owner of the Berry Factory, which provides the nation with her brand of gourmet berries. She has built a lucrative career simply by doing what she loves, and now she shares her secrets and tips so you can too. In this accessible and enthusiastic guide, Fitzpatrick reveals her triumphs and failures, offering useful strategies and skills to create and maintain a business.

How the West Was Drawn: Cowboy Charlie's Art From the time he was a small a child, Charles Marion Russell loved cowboys and Indians. He grew up to become the first Western artist to actually live what he painted, and it shows in his art. Even historians turn to his work when they want a visualization of the Old West. This artistic journey is filled with the rather unusual stories of the cowboy artist who carried paints and pencils in his saddlebag and sculpted animals out of beeswax and mud. Russell's incredibly realistic representations of Montana in the 1800s are accompanied by questions and prompts, allowing children to crawl into his paintings through imagination and their senses. The history also includes a timeline of Russell's life and encourages parents and teachers to use Cowboy Charlie's work to help teach writing, history, and art.

Irish Alphabet Rickey Pittman, 1998 grand prize winner of the prestigious Ernest Hemingway Short Story Competition, is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Camp Thomas McGuire, in West Monroe, Louisiana. He is also a Civil War reenactor, a public speaker on issues and topics related to the War Between the States, and a musician who travels and performs original and Civil War-period music. He lives with his wife in Bastrop, Louisiana, where he works as a freelance writer and editor.