Author Conversations

Colleen Moran Baldrica is an official Chippewa (Ojibwe) Tribe member of the Pembina Band, from the White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota. She has worked for more than 28 years in public education, and holds advanced degrees with an emphasis in School Counseling.  She has lived her entire life in the St. Croix River Valley, and currently resides in Stillwater, Minnesota, with her husband.

"Tree Spirited Woman is the intensely beautiful story of…a guiding friendship with a wise and mystical woman, who [shares her] universal message about the value of letting go, trusting in love, valuing personal relationships, and accepting the inevitable phenomena of death within the living world around us…. This [book] is a warmly recommended compendium of spiritual insights, experiences, and observations [and] is inspired and inspiring reading."
 
Midwest Book Review, 2008 – Five Stars

Tree Spirited Woman is a story of spiritual awakening and life enrichment.

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The paradigm shift is happening. With our instant technological capabilities to connect around the world, is also coming a parallel understanding of how interconnected we are as inhabitants of this planet. There is nothing that is done halfway around the world that doesn’t affect us right here. This realization propels us into the question of just what kind of world do we want to live in. A world of those with and those without, unpeaceful and filled with angst, or a world of common sense realities predicated on common good. We live in a global time of decision. We live with the power to claim our future.

Common Sense for Common Good is an inspirational book about real people and moving this world forward toward a sustainable life for everyone, including the planet. This short book is easy to read and filled with simple, straightforward actions you can take right here and right now. The book is meant to encourage us all to think about our choices and hopefully make better ones. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It will make you think.

Karen Olson Johnson is a well-known and highly respected public speaker and workshop presenter on sustainability topics and science. She has educated and inspired preschool through college level students in exciting hands-on science.

She is a teacher’s teacher who has taught hundreds of undergraduate and graduate level teachers-to-be as well as those with years of teaching experience. As a consultant, writer, and sustainability expert who develops science and environmental projects, Karen is much in demand. She delivers high quality work tailored to the individual, group, or institution she serves.

Nominated for Friends of the St. Paul Public Library 2010 Book Awards

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Ken Mansfield first worked with the Beatles in the 1960s when he was the American manager of Apple Records. More than likely it was his brush with Beatles fame that landed him this publishing contract, but it is his writing talent and depth of personal story that makes this spiritual memoir rock. Mansfield jumps back and forth, from his childlike fear of landing in London for the first time to his mature and reflective life in the California fishing community of Bodega Bay (seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds). Beatles fans will love the insider’s scoop about the Fabulous Four.  Ken’s talks about friendship with Ringo which is both fresh and intriguing.

Ken Mansfield has experienced a life that most people have only read about. He was in the heart and heat of the music industry when it was young and vibrant—back when creativity and passion made the music. Beginning with being the leader of the successful southern California folk group “The Town Criers” he graduated to becoming a top music industry executive and
producer in Hollywood and Nashville. As a Capitol Records executive he had the great fortune of being part of the classic era of pop and jazz working with artists such as Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee, George Shearing, The Four Freshmen, Nancy Wilson, Judy Garland, Lou Rawls, Glen Campbell, Bobbie Gentry, and Al Martino as well as the early careers of legendary country artists Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and Sonny James. But then the tempo really picked up and the pace quickened when he began working with bands like The Beach Boys, The Beatles and The Band.

A simple young man from the Indian reservation lands in Northern Idaho Ken found himself propelled into the center of a rock and roll whirlwind when the Beatles asked him to be the US Manager of their Apple Record label as well as acting as their personal liaison between the UK and the US. When the Beatles breakup seemed inevitable he moved on to become a Vice President at MGM Records and then President of a CBS label owned by Andy Williams.

Wanting to fly even higher and faster he left the corporate world to set up his own company Hometown Productions Inc. where he began producing famous artists of that era such as WaylonJennings, Jessi Colter, Don Ho, David Cassidy, Andy Williams, Claudine Longet, The Flying Burrito Bros. and more. His downfall was inevitable but the eventual result was incredible— from the ashes came the beauty and joy of the Risen Lord and in time he was commissioned to produce the renowned Imperials and eventually earned a Grammy and a Dove Award when he produced the Gaither Vocal Band’s classic “Homecoming” album.

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The second memoir from record-industry vet Mansfield (The Beatles, the Bible and Bodega Bay), a simple look at a complex happening, recounts his overwhelmingly positive experiences working with the Fab Four (and others) as they put together their late-career masterpiece The White Album. Mansfield relates how a lucky break in the 1960s took him from promotions executive for Hollywood’s Capitol Records to U.S. manager of Beatles-owned Apple Records. One of the few Americans allowed into the group’s inner circle, Mansfield presents revealing one-on-one time with each band member, yielding insight beyond their public personas. Ken Mansfield has experienced a life that most people have only read about. He was in the heart and heat of the music industry when it was young and vibrant—back when creativity and passion made the music. Beginning with being the leader of the successful southern California folk group “The Town Criers” he graduated to becoming a top music industry executive and producer in Hollywood and Nashville. As a Capitol Records executive he had the great fortune of being part of the classic era of pop and jazz working with artists such as Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee, George Shearing, The Four Freshmen, Nancy Wilson, Judy Garland, Lou Rawls, Glen Campbell, Bobbie Gentry, and Al Martino as well as the early careers of legendary country artists Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and Sonny James. But then the tempo really picked up and the pace quickened when he began working with bands like The Beach Boys, The Beatles and The Band.

A simple young man from the Indian reservation lands in Northern Idaho Ken found himself propelled into the center of a rock and roll whirlwind when the Beatles asked him to be the US Manager of their Apple Record label as well as acting as their personal liaison between the UK and the US. When the Beatles breakup seemed inevitable he moved on to become a Vice President at MGM Records and then President of a CBS label owned by Andy Williams.

Wanting to fly even higher and faster he left the corporate world to set up his own company Hometown Productions Inc. where he began producing famous artists of that era such as WaylonJennings, Jessi Colter, Don Ho, David Cassidy, Andy Williams, Claudine Longet, The Flying Burrito Bros. and more. His downfall was inevitable but the eventual result was incredible— from the ashes came the beauty and joy of the Risen Lord and in time he was commissioned to produce the renowned Imperials and eventually earned a Grammy and a Dove Award when he produced the Gaither Vocal Band’s classic “Homecoming” album.

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“It took heart and talent. Someone would believe in you on a whim and take a chance on you…”— Ken Mansfield

Ken Mansfield, the former U. S. manager of the Beatles and an award-winning producer, has pursued his love for music all his life. After growing up in Idaho, Ken spent a short time in the Navy before getting his B. S. in Marketing from San Diego University. Ken finally reached the music business when Capitol Records hired him in 1965. While at Capitol Records, Ken worked with the Beatles and other well-known artists, including the Beach Boys, Glen Campbell, and Lou Rawls. He moved to Apple Records after its formation by the Beatles in 1967. Of all the experiences he had while working with the Beatles, his favorite memory is their last concert on a rooftop in London.

After leaving Apple Records in 1971, Ken became a VP for MGM Records along with other Apple executives. Then Ken became President of Andy Williams CBS Records Label of Barnaby Records, where he was the producer to the growing outlaw movement in country music. Ken says he found excitement in the movement’s “freedom of being bad boys, in that freedom of making music that no one had ever made before.” He worked with artists such as Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, Willie Nelson, and Dolly Parton.

The 1980s were tough years for Ken as he faced financial debt and spiritual crisis and ended up in Nashville with only three suitcases and three cardboard boxes. Despite these difficult years, Ken managed to put his life back together after meeting his wife Connie and accepting Christ as his savior. He continued to follow his passion for music by producing different gospel artists, including the Gaither Vocal Band.

While looking back over his time working in the music world, Ken says, “There’s a sense of movement in the entertainment industry. You’re always on the move, mentally, physically, psychologically.” This sense of movement prompted him to write Between Wyomings, his third book, as he traveled through the U. S. His trip gave him a chance to reflect over his music and spiritual journey with a quiet mind and the distance of time to erase any painful memories. He fills the book with memories of the artists he worked with and his day-by-day spiritual insights. His earlier books, The Beatles, the Bible, and Bodega Bay and The White Book, contain many more memories of his time with the Beatles and other artists.

Ken is an ordained minister and highly sought after public speaker who appears at churches and colleges across the nation. He currently lives in California with Connie and is recovering from recent cancer treatments.

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Here is a two part interview with T-Love from Energy Awareness and Blog Talk Radio with former WCCO / CBS radio personality and author Brad Walton shares his personal story of a profound transformation that followed his open heart surgery.

For centuries, poets and philosophers have sensed that the heart is at the center of our lives. Saint-Exupery wrote, And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Even when we re not consciously communicating with others, our physiological systems interact in subtle and surprising ways. Did you know that the electromagnetic signal produced by your heart is registered in the brain waves of people around you?

With all of our conversations about love and exposure to the word “love,” we have done little to understand the deeper relationship of love that is so vital to our physical and spiritual heart. We feel the pain of a broken heart but don’t understand why. We find it difficult to accept the fact that we feel pain for good reasons. Those reasons are becoming more evident as modern research provides greater insight into this incredible organ. The physical and the spiritual world are joined in this pulsing universe where love finds its home.

Sid Korpi has combined her decades of varied professional experience — as an editor, writer, journalist, English teacher, actor, and ordained minister/animal chaplain — with her lifelong devotion to the animal companions who have blessed and shared her life in creating Good Grief: Finding Peace After Pet Loss. Surviving a “tsunami of loss” in her own life led to her discovery of spiritual truths that brought her strength and facilitated her heart’s healing. She felt compelled to share these things with others who suffer — often in isolation — from the passing on of their very dearest nonhuman friends, their pets.

She notes, “Unfortunately, our society on the whole discounts their grief as frivolous since they’ve ‘merely lost an animal.’ People often report that they got over the death of a fellow human being easier than they did that of their pet simply because they were given permission to really grieve over the human and thus found the support they needed to process those feelings. This same support is often sorely lacking when the intense feelings of sorrow are a result of pet loss.”

In this book, she melds her personal perspectives and stories with those of professionals (such as veterinarians, animal communicators, and religious leaders) and other animal lovers the world over. She hopes to ease the pain of those who feel they are alone in their suffering — because, she has found, nothing could be further from the truth.

“Those of us who share a deep bond with our animal companions are in abundant supply. Too many of us have obviously felt we must keep silent in our anguish or be labeled somehow defective,” she says. “I want this book to end the misperception that we must suffer in solitary confinement and thus prolong, or stay permanently stuck in, our grief.”

Sid Korpi lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband Anthony Kaczor and their six “mere animal” friends/family members: Blanche, and Keely (Westies); Giles and Xander (cats); and Atticus and Scout (finches).

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Minnesota born Dick Hill is a Five Star Author who has earned numerous creative, marketing and broadcasting awards. Hill, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, survived a thirty-five year advertising career including twelve years with Campbell Mithun. He is president of Dick Hill Advertising, and lives with his wife, Mary, in Edina, Minnesota. Their car’s license plate reads HKDONMN, acronym for the title of this book.

What’s inside Hooked on Minnesota? Roger Erickson, the former WCCO announcer, and partner with Charlie Boone on The Boone & Erickson Show, tells about the many joys of living and vacationing in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Photography buffs will enjoy the tips and ideas that Kathy Scott Lampi, Grand Rapids, shares with readers. The Photo Lady’s north woods camera-experience is featured in chapter Four, “Nature and Vacation Photo Tips.” The biggest fish caught in Minnesota weighed an even 54 pounds. The giant muskie (muskellunge), was pulled in and weighed at Lake Winnibigoshish, Itasca County, in 1957.

Hooked On Minnesota is a valuable guide to Minnesota’s great wonders-from the bustling Mall of America to the untouched wilderness at the Boundary waters (BWCA). Dick Hill’s insights about Minnesota’s good life make this a fascinating and entertaining reading experience all wrapped into one. Make this book your constant guide to vacationing in Minnesota. For all the times you want something to do, someplace to go, somewhere to dine, picnic, swim or fish. Hooked On Minnesota is a true gift for residents and visitors, alike. It is the ultimate Minnesota souvenir for everyone’s coffee table.

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Dr. Eldridge graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School with prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha honors. She completed her residency through the U of M with time spent in Hawaii studying health risks related to human exposure to pesticides.

Dr. Eldridge practiced family medicine with a passionate emphasis on prevention for over 15 years in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, before devoting herself full time to researching and speaking internationally on cancer prevention and nutrition.

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Dr. John Gray is an expert in the field of communication, Gray’s focus is to help men and women understand, respect and appreciate their differences in both personal and professional relationships. In his many books, CD’s, DVD’s, tapes, workshops and seminars, he provides simple, practical tools and insights to effectively manage stress and improve relationships at all stages and ages by creating the brain and body chemistry of health, happiness and lasting romance.

Over the last fifty years, life has become more complicated. Longer working hours, intensified by grueling commutes and more traffic, the increased cost of housing, food, and health care, rising credit card debt, and the combined responsibilities of work and childcare in two-career families are only a few of the sources of stress in our fast-paced modern lives. In spite of the new technologies designed to connect us, information overload and round-the-clock accessibility via the Internet and cell phones have reduced much of our communication to the equivalent of text messaging. We are stretched to the limit, with little energy for our personal lives. Despite increased independence and opportunities for success at work, we are often left with a sense of isolation and exhaustion at home.

Over the last fifteen years, a new trend in relationships has emerged linked to increasing stress. Both couples and singles believe they are too busy or too exhausted to resolve their relationship issues, and often think their partners are either too demanding or just too different to understand.
Without an understanding of our different needs, men and women are adjusting their actions and reactions to no avail. Our actions may be pointed in the wrong direction. Why Mars and Venus Collide provides a new understanding and a variety of techniques you will need to counter the disruptive effects of stress and to steer a true course to a lifetime of love.

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