Books

NEW YORK (AP) — No former president had a more productive and diverse publishing profession than Jimmy Carter.

Its greater than two dozen Books These included non-fiction, poetry, fiction, religious meditations and a children's story. His memoir “An Hour Before Daylight” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, while his 2006 bestseller “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” sparked heated debate by comparing Israel's policies within the West Bank to South Africa's brutal system of racial segregation .

And just before his one centesimal birthday, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation honored him with a lifetime achievement award for his use of “the power of the written word to promote peace, social justice and global understanding.”

In a recent work, “A Full Life,” Carter noted that he “enjoyed writing” and that his books “provided a much-needed source of income.” But some projects were easier than others.

“Everything to Gain,” a 1987 collaboration together with his wife Rosalynn, became “the worst threat we have ever faced in our marriage,” a stubborn standoff for the Camp David Accords broker and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

According to Carter, Rosalynn was a meticulous author who “viewed the resulting sentences as if they had come down from Mount Sinai, set in stone.” Their memories of various events varied they usually got into “constant arguments.” They were prepared to offer up on the book and pay back the advance until their editor persuaded them to easily split all of the disputed passages between them.

“In the book, each of those paragraphs is marked with a 'J' or an 'R,' and our marriage survived,” he wrote.

Here is a partial list of Carter's books:

• “Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a President”
• “The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East”
• (With Rosalynn Carter) “Everything to Win: Make the Most of the Rest of Your Life”
• “An Outdoor Diary: Adventures and Reflections”
• “Turning Point: A Candidate, a State and a Nation Come of Age”
• “Always a reckoning and other poems”
• (With daughter Amy Carter) “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer”
• “Living Faith”
• “The Virtues of Aging”
• “An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Childhood”
• “Christmas on the Plains: Memories”
• “The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War”
• “Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis”
• “Faith and Freedom: The Christian Challenge for the World”
• “Palestine: Peace instead of apartheid”
• “A remarkable mother”
• “Beyond the White House”
• “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work”
• “White House Diary”
• “NIV Lessons from the Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter”
• “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power”
• “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety”

Calculating the impact

Within a 5-hour flight of Thailand, more than 3.6 billion people live in markets where marriage equality does not exist.

Timothy Hughes

Vice President of Corporate Development at Agoda

A “unique strategic opportunity”

After Martha Stewart appeared in a brand new Netflix documentary about her life and profession, her ex-husband Andy Stewart released a press release saying he was long gone his “painful and abusive” marriage to the approach to life mogul calmly while publicly criticizing her for discussing the matters that led to their divorce, which became final 34 years ago.

“While Andy quietly moved on with his life, Martha appeared to continue publicly insulting the marriage, including comments in a sensational trailer for an upcoming documentary on Netflix,” said the statement, written and signed by each Andy Stewart and his current wife, Shyla Stewart.

The statement went on Facebook before the documentary was released on Netflix last week, however the statement began circulating online on Thursday. The documentary is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker RJ Cutler. In it, the 83-year-old media icon spoke about a number of the dark private times in her outwardly elegant and achieved life. in line with The Cut.

Stewart spoke concerning the pain of her ex-husband's infidelity and subsequent divorce and admitted that she also cheated, greater than once. She also opened up about how she struggled as a brand new mother and recalled her insider training scandal within the early 2000s that landed her in federal prison for five months.

For Stewart fans, the revelations about her long and unhappy marriage to Andy Stewart may not seem so latest. According to Stewart's lore, she married him in 1961 when she was 19 and he was 24, having met him through his sister, who was certainly one of her classmates at Barnard. At the time, Andy Stewart was studying law at Yale but eventually went into book publishing.

Some reports say the wedding worked well to start with, because the two lived in Manhattan in the course of the week, where Stewart “grew orchids in the bathtub.” People magazine reported in 1995. On weekends they restored a schoolhouse within the Berkshires, where they supposedly did the “back to the country thing.”

But in her documentary, Stewart admitted that the warning signs started to appear during her five-month honeymoon in Europe, The Cut reported. While in Florence, Stewart said she kissed a stranger she met within the cathedral while her groom was back on the hotel.

“It wasn't naughty or unfaithful,” Stewart said of the kiss. “It was just emotional from that moment on. That's how I saw it. And it was exciting. I wish we could all have an evening like this.”

In the documentary, Stewart also spoke about her struggles as a young mother to her daughter Alexis, who was born in 1965, The Cut reported. “It turns out that being a mother isn't natural at all,” Stewart explained of her discomfort with having a toddler when she was so young herself.

“There wasn't a lot of affection in our house,” Stewart also said of growing up, in line with The Cut. “How could I be a truly great mother if I didn’t have the training to be a mother?”

After working as a stockbroker on Wall Street for several years, Stewart founded a catering company that might form the idea of her lifestyle empire. According to reports, their already difficult marriage worsened as their success increased. Back in 1980, about seven years before their split, Andy Stewart told People magazine that his perfectionist wife “did not tolerate my carelessness, my stupidity or my eccentricities.”

In 1995, certainly one of the couple's former friends told People that Andy Stewart was “always belittled or insulted by her.” An unauthorized 1997 Stewart biography by Jerry Oppenheimer reported that each Martha and Andy cheated on Stewart, The Cut reported.

In the documentary, Stewart suggested that the infidelity reports were true. “I don’t know how many different girlfriends he had, but I think there were a few,” Stewart said. She also admitted that she had “a very brief affair with a very attractive Irishman” early in her marriage, which she dismissed as “nothing.”

Stewart added: “I would never have broken up a marriage for this. It was like the kiss in that cathedral.”

The documentary producers challenged Stewart on camera by saying that Andy Stewart claimed he didn't cheat on her until she told him about her own affair, The Cut reported. She refuted that claim, saying, “Well, I don’t think that’s true.”

Andy and Shyla Stewart attempted to counter Stewart's portrayal of him of their Facebook post, wherein they described him as a “brilliant publisher, part-time naturalist and wildlife photographer.” Shyla Stewart also said her husband was “one of the gentlest, gentlest, kindest men” she has ever known. The statement also said that the couple had “built a life full of beauty, meaning, productivity and purpose,” which they share with “a beautiful, blended family” of 5 adult children and three “adorable” grandchildren.

They compared Andy Stewart's “painful” life with Martha Stewart to the “joyful, purposeful” existence he now leads. “Every day we openly express our gratitude for our love and for our life together,” the statement said. The couple concluded their statement by wishing their ex-wife and everybody else “the experience of loving and being loved, deeply and fully, and the peace that comes from such love.”

Meanwhile, it seems that Stewart may not have gotten much peace from participating within the documentary. In a telephone interview with the New York Times last week, She also commented on parts of the documentary, but for various reasons than her ex-husband.

The notoriously demanding media personality criticized the filmmakers for selecting unflattering camera angles of her and called the second half of the film “a little lazy.”

“Those final scenes where I look like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden?” said Stewart. “Boy, I told him to get rid of those. And he refused. I hate these final scenes. Hate her.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — After a two-decade relationship, two engagements, two weddings and countless headlines, Jennifer Lopez has filed for divorce from Ben Affleck.

Tuesday's filing in Los Angeles Superior Court apparently ended a star pairing – or not less than its second installment – that beamed from the best heights of popular culture and graced countless tabloid covers. They became referred to as “Bennifer” even before such power couple knockoffs were ubiquitous.

The filing was first reported on the web site TMZ. TMZ said Lopez had given a separation date of April 26, 2024. She added that she didn’t mention a prenuptial agreement.

After meeting, falling in love and getting engaged within the early 2000s – and starring together within the infamous movies “Gigli” in 2003 and “Jersey Girl” in 2004 – the couple parted ways, partly blaming public pressure for the split.

But to the delight of many and maybe the skepticism of others, they reunited twenty years later and married in 2022 – twice.

“Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And as it turns out, love is patient. Twenty years of patience,” Lopez wrote when she announced her first flash wedding in Las Vegas in July, registering as Jennifer Lynn Affleck.

“Stay here long enough and you might have the most beautiful moment of your life driving through Las Vegas at 12:30 a.m. in the Tunnel of Love with your children, who you will be with forever,” she wrote in her newsletter.

The couple flew to Las Vegas, stood according to 4 other couples for marriage licenses and were married just after midnight at A Little White Wedding Chapel, where Lopez said a Bluetooth speaker played their temporary walk down the aisle. She called it essentially the most beautiful night of the couple's lives.

A month later, they celebrated a far more lavish wedding at Affleck's home in Georgia, in front of family and friends. The ceremony took place on August 20, which As Variety noted, it was exactly two years before she filed divorce papers this week.

Both were previously married. Affleck, 51, married Jennifer Garner in 2005, with whom he has three children. They divorced in 2018.

Lopez, 54, has been married 3 times before. She was briefly married to Ojani Noa from 1997 to 1998 and to Cris Judd from 2001 to 2003. She and singer Marc Anthony were married for a decade, marrying in 2004, and have 14-year-old twins. She has been dating former baseball player Alex Rodriguez since 2017, however the couple called off their engagement in 2021.

Throughout all of it, it was Lopez who described her and Affleck's journey most clearly. When asked earlier this 12 months if she was harder on herself because their relationships attracted a lot attention, Lopez agreed.

“Oh yeah. 100%. It made me doubt myself and feel really bad at times. Sometimes I felt like I wanted to give up. But at the end of the day, I feel like you kind of have to do this thing to learn to cope,” she says. told the Associated Press. “You take the things that could be constructive and use them, and the rest you just throw away as some kind of hate or, well, other things like that, and just think, 'Whatever. I know who I am, I know what I want to do.'”

Affleck himself expressed his admiration for her self-control, He told AP last 12 months that he agreed with the commentary that Hollywood was unsure tips on how to capitalize on her versatile talent.

“I think she's at her best,” Affleck said on the time. “She's doing an extraordinary job, especially because she's taking the step of taking responsibility for what she's doing rather than saying, 'This is what's being offered to me.'”

Lopez stars within the upcoming film “Unstoppable,” directed by Affleck and Matt Damon at Artists Equity.

In May, she starred within the Netflix film Atlas. At the tip of the month, she suddenly canceled her 2024 North American tour, saying she was “heartbroken and devastated” to disappoint her fans, however the move was mandatory. “Jennifer is taking time off to be with her children, family and close friends,” organizers said in an announcement.

The tour was to be her first in five years and was to support her first solo album in a decade, This Is Me… Now, and its accompanying film, a fictionalized take a look at her long love life and a documentary.

“When I was a girl, they asked me what I wanted to be. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a woman in love,” Lopez sang within the title song.

The album, she said, was inspired by her rekindled relationship with Affleck. But the film is more about “your journey as a human being, the journey of a human being and what it takes to go from heartbreak back to love. Or the journey of a hopeless romantic looking for love.” In the film, she played a personality called The Artist, who also decided as a toddler what she desired to be when she grew up: “in love.”

But the road was rocky. In an early scene, the artist sits on the back of a motorbike, riding along a beach with a well-built man wearing a face mask. Then the motorcycle crashes.

“Not all love stories have a happy ending,” she says.

Originally published: August 20, 2024 at 16:59

A brand new Tangled-themed attraction in Japan, dubbed Disney's “most romantic” attraction ever and touted as a possible alternative to Disneyland, is quickly becoming a preferred spot for marriage proposals.

The recent Rapunzel's Lantern Festival The attraction, which opened in June at Tokyo DisneySea, was mentioned as a possible project for the recently approved DisneylandForward Plan to expand the theme park.

Emily “Emo” O'Brien, Executive Creative Producer of the Walt Disney Imagineering Portfolio, described an iconic moment in Rapunzel's Lantern Festival as “one of the most romantic scenes we've ever created in an attraction” through the panel discussion “Bringing the Worlds of Disney Animation to Life in Disney Parks” at D23 Fan Event on the Anaheim Convention Center.

“The overwhelming feeling of romance is actually palpable,” O'Brien said through the D23 fan event. “So much so that we know of two, not one, but two marriage proposals that have actually taken place in the attraction. And both were successful. They both said 'yes.' It has to work.”

The recent attraction “Rapunzel’s Lantern Festival” takes visitors on a romantic gondola ride as Rapunzel escapes from her prison tower, falls in love with the thief Flynn Rider and explores the Kingdom of Corona.

The ride begins outdoors, with Rapunzel singing “When Will My Life Begin” from her tower window while Flynn and Maximus watch nearby. Rapunzel and Flynn visit locations from the film before singing the duet “I See the Light” beneath the film's iconic scene of countless floating lanterns.

Rapunzel’s Forest plays a key role in Fantasy Springs, the latest port of Tokyo DisneySea, which also The Frozen Kingdom And Peter Pan's Neverland.

Disneyland unveils plans for brand new Avatar land based on 'Way of Water'

The backstory of Rapunzel's Forest brings to life the fairytale story of the kidnapped princess with magical long, golden curls, her kingdom of Corona, and the annual Lantern Festival from Disney's 2010 computer-animated film.

A Tangled-themed land was one in all the possible projects within the DisneylandForward expansion plan approved by the Anaheim City Council in early May. The plan updates a city plan from the Nineteen Nineties and calls for a combination of theme park, hotel, retail, dining and entertainment on the eastern and western edges of the Disneyland resort.

DisneylandForward announced 10 themed lands based on Tangled, Avatar, Frozen, Peter Pan, Zootopia, Toy Story, Black Panther, Coco, Tron and Encanto as possible expansion projects in Anaheim.

Disney announced through the D23 fan event that a brand new Coconut-themed attraction is coming to Disney California Adventure within the near future, and an Encanto-themed attraction is planned for 2027 at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida.

Originally published: August 13, 2024 at 4:35 am

DEAR ABBY: My husband and I cannot agree on when we are able to rejoice our fiftieth wedding anniversary.

However, he insists that just as a baby celebrates its first birthday after living for a yr, we must “live the 50th year” before reaching our fiftieth anniversary – which he says might be June 16, 2025.

DEAR COUNTER: A wedding begins on the day of the marriage ceremony, so you’ve got actually accomplished 50 years of marriage this month. Your first anniversary – the completion of your first yr – was in 1975. Your fiftieth is in 2024.

You shouldn't must wait one other yr to rejoice such a monumental occasion. If he's not able to rejoice, ask him to only say so, but don't let him use that argument as an excuse.

DEAR ABBY: I’m fortunate to have an incredible relationship with my in-laws.

We live half a continent apart, and although we regularly video chat, we only get to see them in person two or 3 times a yr. They recently retired, and we plan to maneuver together to a brand new place that’s closer to my family and could be a snug place for them to spend their retirement.

A couple of years ago, my mother-in-law “Irene” fainted twice in someday. Since then, she has shown signs of cognitive decline. She has trouble finding words when speaking, misses words when writing, is somewhat forgetful, and has an involuntary, repetitive facial twitch. She refuses to confer with her doctor about it.

During her last visit, my husband talked to his father about our concerns about her health, and when his father talked to Irene about it, she freaked out!

Abby, I don't know what to do. We're excited to maneuver to the identical town as my in-laws in order that they can spend more time with their grandchildren, but when she's not honest about what's happening, I won't feel comfortable letting her and my easily distracted father-in-law spend time alone with our children.

I also wish to plan for the longer term to make sure we’re capable of look after Irene if her condition worsens.

If I can't address this issue together with her, it can ultimately damage the connection I'm so fortunate to have. Is there anything I can do, or should I just keep quiet?

DEAR READY: Was Irene taken to the emergency room when she collapsed twice in someday? Was her doctor not notified? Her subsequent cognitive decline may very well be related to those incidents.

It could be an actual shame if something may very well be done to enhance their condition and this was ignored.

And on a rather different topic, when you are all moving to the brand new community, it is perhaps sensible to look into assisted living facilities on your in-laws.