Max Blue Libri

Includes statistics, milestones and limericks about the team.

Higher Ed is six feet nine inch Edward Appleton, president of Lawt Sidney - an anagram for Walt Disney - University. Among the seven Sidney U. board members are Grumpy Marcus Elay (Yale spelled backwards), Feliz Gonzalez, a crane operator on the San Diego docks, and Doc Rivera, head Veterinarian at the Tijuana Bull Ring. Higher Ed has his hands full dealing with, among other things, Deans such as Dangerous Dan Stonewood who recites Robert Service ballads, like The Shooting of Dan McGrew, in his head during faculty meetings. But besides all the satirical zaniness, the novel Higher Ed offers thoughts on some serious issues facing modern society, including, extramarital affairs, scientific fraud, and bioethical questions relating to abortion, euthanasia, and aging.

Giessow's Cottage Farm is a resort in the Ozark Mountains where Jaybird goes with his family every summer. But this summer is different because a new baby sister has joined the family and Jaybird feels so neglected that he has decided to run away from home. Jaybird's 11-year old head is in for a confusing, adventurous whirl when he meets Phil, a wild-eyed mountain man. Jaybird quickly sees that Phil is a little bit crazy, but he likes him because Phil is the only grownup who doesn't treat him like a kid. In the next week Jaybird survives a wild ride on a raging river, loses a finger to a firecracker that almost costs him his life, falls in love with a beautiful young girl, rides in a railway cattle car, eats Mulligan stew in a hobo camp, wins $500 in a crap game, serves as batboy for a major league baseball team, wins a fortune on a horserace then loses it in a flash flood. But all this is nothing compared to what Jaybird faces when he returns with Phil to his family at Giessow's Cottage Farm.

God is Alive and Playing Third Base for the Appleton Papermakers does not have all the answers needed to make sense of the 20th century and beyond, but with tongue only partly in cheek the book claims to find some solace in a kid's game played by adults. "Grampa, how did you know it was God playing third base for the Appleton Papermakers?" "Because He could perform miracles." "What miracles could He perform?" "He could hit Lowell Grosskopf's curveball." "That doesn't sound like a miracle to me." "That's because you never tried to hit Lowell Grosskopf's curveball."