New Releases by Laura Jones

This book is three stories combined to tell the last one. The first is a diary of Nathaniel Myer, which begins March 21, 1853, that takes the Myer family on their five & one half months of covered wagon adventure, ending in Oregon. The second is a diary covering the authors'' three week RV caravan trek along the Oregon Trail. The third is a story based upon Nathaniel Myer''s diary. Nathaniel was age 68, his wife, Mary, 61; their offspring ranging from age 38 to 4 months. Included were seven hired hands, five teams of oxen, two horse teams, & eighty head of cattle. Our reason for joining the caravan, at Independence, Missouri, was to experience the Oregon Trail as closely as practical. We wanted to relate to the experiences of thousands of emigrants who traveled two thousand miles over the trails to Oregon, now well marked with posts & monuments. Most of the time we were on back roads, with many unpaved & dusty! Many reference books, diaries, & maps are available. The book ends with a fascinating story of the life of a pioneer family on their wagon train journey to Oregon.

Henry James''s acclaimed novel, The Portrait of a Lady, will make it to the silver screen in late 1996, directed by Jane Campion, award-winning director of The Piano. Here is the screenplay with a Preface by Campion and beautiful photographs of the production. photos.

Screenplay; "white pages."

Laura Jones chronicles the unique journey of a man guided by the spirits of his ancestors, seized suddenly by a vision of theater. Pursuing it unwaveringly over unending obstacles and dangers, he somehow emerged to say the unsayable on the world stage.

The purpose of this study was to determine what facets of the social network of elderly Albertans are associated with the life satisifaction of the elderly. The three aspects of social network studied were size and frequency of network contact, perceived adequacy of network contact and perceived access to one''s network. The original data were collected in a series of interviews with 601 persons aged 55 years and older. The median age of the sample members was 72.5 years with a range from 55 to 96 years. There were 204 (34%) males and 397 (66%) females. The theoretical framework chosen for this study was the exchange theory. The exchange theory is a conceptual framework which views human behavior and family behavior on the basis of rewards and costs. Exchange theory explains social interaction in terms of its outcomes or the rewards received and the costs incurred by each participant in the interaction. This study was a survey which utilized secondary data analysis. The statistical tool used was exploratory data analysis. Box Plot found in SPSSX under MANOVA was used to further analyse the data. The main results were; size and frequency of network contact with one''s network were not associated with the elderlys'' life satisfaction. Perceived adequacy of contact with one''s network is associated with the elderlys'' life satisfaction. Perceived accessibility to one''s network is associated with life satisfaction.