There is a certain kind of country song that arrives with a title so thoroughly American that you can practically hear the marketing department uncapping its red, white and blue markers. Gary Pratt’s “4th of July,” featuring Kate Szallar, would appear to qualify. The title promises fireworks, summer nostalgia, patriotic sentiment and perhaps an obligatory reference to cold beer.
Then Pratt starts singing about February.
This is either an extraordinary lapse in holiday scheduling or a songwriter who understands that the most useful thing about a familiar image is the opportunity to turn it inside out.
Fortunately, it’s the latter.
Released July 3rd through MTS Records, “4th of July” is not a patriotic anthem but a cheerful, unapologetically suggestive country-pop single about romantic chemistry. Its fireworks aren’t illuminating the neighborhood. They’re apparently going off in the living room.
The song opens with an ordinary February evening, two people staying indoors and a series of kisses that threaten to make the winter weather irrelevant. By the chorus, Pratt has transformed the Fourth of July into an elaborate euphemism for physical attraction.
There are bodies, parties and a recurring “boom boom boom” that leaves relatively little to the imagination.
One could accuse the song of being obvious. One would also have to acknowledge that obviousness has rarely prevented a country chorus from becoming effective.
Indeed, the central conceit belongs to a long tradition of Nashville songwriting in which everyday American imagery doubles as a vocabulary for adult romance. Country music has been turning domestic objects, weather conditions and recreational activities into sexual metaphors for decades. Pratt’s contribution is to borrow an entire national holiday.
It’s a reasonably ambitious appropriation for a song whose second verse essentially celebrates staying on the couch.
The record’s appeal depends heavily on Pratt’s ability to deliver these lines without sounding either embarrassed or excessively pleased with himself. He manages that balancing act through a relaxed, conversational vocal performance.
Pratt doesn’t attempt to reinvent himself as a swaggering young country heartthrob. His voice carries the ease of a performer comfortable enough with his material to let the humor emerge naturally.
That makes the flirtation more convincing.
Kate Szallar, meanwhile, provides something more substantial than the customary female voice added to brighten a chorus. Her contribution helps establish the mutuality of the attraction. Rather than listening to one man describe his supposedly spectacular romantic evening, we hear two performers sharing the emotional space.
Their voices complement each other without turning the song into a competitive duet.
This is particularly important because “4th of July” is not exactly overflowing with narrative complications. Nobody has a secret. Nobody is leaving town. Nobody is discovering an inconvenient text message from an ex.
The central dramatic development is that two people are enjoying each other’s company, and apparently doing so enthusiastically.
For contemporary country, a genre that frequently alternates between romantic devastation and beer-assisted emotional recovery, that almost qualifies as a radical narrative choice.
Producer Adam Ernst deserves credit for understanding the assignment.
Ernst, whose recording credits include work with Bailey Zimmerman, Mickey Guyton and Chase Matthew, produced the single and performed every instrument on it. That makes “4th of July” an unusually self-contained studio production, although its greatest strength is that it doesn’t sound like a demonstration of one musician’s versatility.
The guitars, rhythmic accents and contemporary-country polish serve the song’s central hook rather than competing with it.
There is a commercial intelligence to the arrangement. The chorus arrives with the requisite lift, the production remains bright and accessible, and nothing distracts unnecessarily from Pratt and Szallar.
Whether that constitutes artistic innovation is another question.
“4th of July” doesn’t challenge the boundaries of country music. Its melodic language is familiar, its metaphor is deliberately uncomplicated, and its repeated refrain favors immediate memorability over lyrical development.
But innovation isn’t the only measure of successful popular music.
Sometimes the achievement lies in knowing precisely what sort of record you’re making.
Pratt has created a single designed to generate smiles rather than revelations. The hook is easy to remember, the mood is buoyant, and the romantic imagery is suggestive enough to be playful without becoming particularly risqué.
The most interesting aspect may be the way its holiday packaging conceals a song that isn’t actually seasonal.
Beginning in February is a clever decision. It establishes that July Fourth is a comparison, not a setting. The excitement Pratt describes can occur in any month, provided the right person is sharing the room.
That gives the record a better chance of surviving beyond its obvious summer-playlist opportunities.
There’s also an appealing contrast between the grandiosity of the imagery and the modesty of the circumstances. A holiday involving nationwide celebrations becomes a private experience requiring no crowd, no elaborate plans and no expensive entertainment.
The fireworks are imaginary. The satisfaction is not.
With another collaboration, “Never Been in Love,” on the horizon, Pratt and Szallar appear interested in developing their musical partnership beyond a single summertime release.
“4th of July” provides an encouraging foundation.
It’s not a profound statement about romance, and its chorus probably won’t inspire graduate seminars in songwriting. But it accomplishes something that can be surprisingly difficult: making uncomplicated happiness sound genuinely enjoyable.
Gary Pratt and Kate Szallar have delivered a polished, flirtatious country single that understands the difference between a grand spectacle and a good time.
Four years ago, Nathaniel Duncombe lost his mother. She was the woman who had walked him through his First Communion class and, years before that, served as his Akela in Cub Scouts. She was, by his own account, the person most responsible for his closeness to Christ. Her death did not push him away from his faith; it pulled him further in. He’d wanted to write a book for nearly a decade; her passing, and the years of grief and growth that followed, gave the idea its final shape.
“The rough patch I was going through was a few years ago, four years ago, when my mother passed,” Duncombe said. “She was not only my First Communion teacher, she was also my Akela for Cub Scouts. She was very impactful in my life, and that’s who inspired me to grow closer to Christ, especially going to church, having fellowship, as well as reading Scripture.”
He had wanted to write a book for about ten years, he said, but it was during Easter of this year that the idea finally took shape. What emerged was a 90-day spiritual journey meant to help readers not only draw closer to God, but understand who God is calling them to be. “It led me to deepening my faith and better understanding not only myself, but who God wants me to be,” he said, “loving not only myself genuinely, but loving others genuinely, yet at the same time focusing on building my relationship with Christ.”
A Faith Built on Presence, Not Perfection
For Duncombe, abundant life is not an abstract theological idea. It is something he has watched play out in the people around him. “As time continued, I saw not only Christ within myself, but through other individuals that in their actions, they showed their love that Christ had told us to share with others,” he said. “That is the key thing that emphasized to me how to pursue what is necessary in life. It’s all about showing love.”
That conviction shaped his decision to structure the book as a 90-day guide rather than a traditional devotional. “Each day has something more important built off of the previous one,” he explained. “It builds off of each other, and each day is impactful, and it teaches you how to not only grow with Christ, but to understand better who you are through Christ and in Christ.”
He believes most people are chasing the same things, whether or not they can name them. “Love, compassion, happiness, joy. These are some of the many things that many individuals constantly seek,” he said. “The only way to truly find them is through Christ.” He spoke from experience. At one point, he said he felt that a part of himself was missing, and it was daily meditation, Scripture reading, and a deliberate focus on loving others that filled it.
Believing Versus Living
Duncombe described faith this way:
“Faith is about believing even if it’s not there in the visual reality,” he said. “It’s more so knowing that you can overcome the world no matter what… Faith builds. Faith strengthens us. Faith makes us better.”
The title of the book, The Abundant Life, points to a distinction Duncombe returns to often: the gap between believing in Christ and actually building a life around Him. For him, that gap closes through agape love, showing others compassion, listening with empathy, and simply being present. “If you meet someone in your daily life that is having a bad day, just telling them something friendly, polite and kind can cheer them up,” he said. “It’s about being there for others in their time of need.”
He is candid about why that kind of faith is hard to carry into everyday life. According to him, “People fear being judged for showing their faith, some people wear a mask to conceal who they truly are because they don’t want to let others in, or don’t know how to ask for people to be there for them when they need that the most.”
Even as he emphasizes the 90-day structure, Duncombe is careful to frame it as a beginning rather than a finish line. “There is research in psychology suggesting that it takes about 90 days to change a habit,” he said. “So I focused on the intention of improving a good habit and guiding the readers to have the resources to get them to where they feel they should be, and even more so, helping them to grow closer to Christ.”
When Faith Meets Real Life
Duncombe does not shy away from naming what he sees as the obstacles most common in today’s culture. “Lust, greed, dishonesty,” he said. “Idolization, not genuine love. These are some of the many things that are within our society.” He points to a broader cultural shift away from the values previous generations held onto, and a corresponding pull back toward what he considers first things. “Just focusing on the key things that are the most important, which is growing closer to God, even more so the first love, which is the love of God.”
For readers who stumble along the way, his counsel is grounded and practical. “It’s more so forgiving themselves, knowing they did something wrong,” he said, “and then taking the necessary steps to make things better, going out of their way to grow closer to God.” Perseverance, he added, is not optional. “It’s about endurance. It’s about keeping the faith.”
From Personal Faith to Mission
Photo Courtesy: Nathaniel Duncombe
(Nathaniel Duncombe, author of The Abundant Life, encourages readers to move beyond belief and put their faith into action through love, compassion, and meaningful service.)
Duncombe sees personal spiritual growth as something meant to move outward. “It’s about not only knowing about faith and how to build it,” he said. “It’s about sharing that faith with others and understanding that only together we can make the world a better place.” He is quick to note he does not think of himself in grand terms. “I don’t really consider myself a disciple,” he said. “I consider myself more so an adopted child of God, more so a loved child of God.”
That mission, he believes, starts close to home. “It’s important to look within your community and find opportunities there,” he said, pointing to his own long history of community service. He also rejects the idea that evangelization requires a public platform. “It’s not about us judging each other, who does this and who does that,” he said. “It’s about being comfortable with who you are in Christ, reflecting your faith in your individual gifts and talents.”
The timing of the book’s release lines up with something bigger than Duncombe’s own journey. World Mission Sunday 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the celebration, with the theme “One in Christ, United in Mission,” a phrase Duncombe says captures exactly what he hopes readers take from his work. “It’s about connecting with each other and showing our love as Christians, uniting as one body of Christ,” he said, “and focusing in on what our Lord Savior and Redeemer has taught us… through acts of kindness, through genuine compassion, joy, sharing it, and above all through loving one another as Christ has loved us.”
Bringing the Message to Readers
Duncombe’s book, The Abundant Life, was brought to readers with the support of Trinity Publishing Press. He describes the collaboration as formative. “It’s been a phenomenal experience,” he said. “I’ve learned and grown through the experience on getting a better understanding of how the process works, and it’s been wonderful to have a guide to show me the correct steps in making my dream of getting a book published into different homes and digital copies for individuals to grow and to learn more about Christ.”
Asked what he would tell someone who feels spiritually lost, his answer was immediate and personal. “I’ll pray with you. I can give you Scripture to read,” he said. “It’s about helping that individual get to where they would feel more comfortable with themselves and their relationship with Christ.”
That instinct to guide rather than lecture goes back years. As a young adult, Duncombe served as a Sunday school teacher for confirmation students, an experience, he said, that taught him how to sit with people’s hardest questions about faith. “Knowing where to go to get the answer, whether it be in the canon or from the Bible or another spiritual leader.”
And if there is one line he hopes readers carry with them long after they close the book, it is the one he offered without hesitation when asked to sum up his message:
“Love one another as I have loved you.”
Nathaniel Duncombe’s message reaches past the book’s final word. The Abundant Life is available through Amazon.
Jennifer Early Calvert’s coming-of-age novel examines bullying, belonging, faith, responsible choices, and the life-changing power of one person who refuses to look away.
A school bus stops outside a trailer in Concord, North Carolina, and a new student steps into a day she already fears. Jennifer Alley carries a worn book bag, hand-me-down clothes, a Southern accent, and the painful awareness that other students may notice every difference before they notice her. By the time she reaches school, whispers have become laughter, and laughter has become permission for a group of classmates to decide who she is.
That opening tension gives BFFs: Best Friends Forever its emotional urgency. Jennifer Early Calvert’s novel begins in the recognizable world of middle school, where a seat on the bus, a glance across a classroom, or a nickname repeated by the right group can alter the entire shape of a day. Yet the story is not simply about cruelty. It asks what happens when someone interrupts it.
A Story About What People Choose to See
Jennifer is introduced as a seventh-grade student trying to survive the social rules of a new school. Ryan Rydell and Seth Hudson quickly make her appearance and accent the center of their jokes. Their behavior is amplified by classmates who laugh, watch, or remain quiet. Calvert understands that bullying rarely belongs to one person alone; it grows through an audience, a hierarchy, and the fear that defending someone else may carry a social cost.
Jennifer’s struggle is therefore larger than learning a clever response. She is fighting to keep other people’s judgments from becoming her own identity. Her singing, intelligence, humor, and sense of purpose exist long before her classmates are willing to recognize them. The question that drives the early story is whether she can continue believing in those unseen parts of herself while the visible world keeps telling her something smaller.
Abby Legna and the Risk of Kindness
Abby Legna enters the story from a very different social position. She is admired, capable, and involved in student leadership. She could protect her standing by remaining distant. Instead, she notices Jennifer. That choice gives the title its meaning: friendship is not presented as a label, a shared photograph, or automatic agreement. It is a series of actions made when kindness is inconvenient.
Abby is not written as a perfect rescuer. She carries grief and private responsibilities of her own, which gives her compassion weight. Her friendship with Jennifer becomes reciprocal: one girl offers belonging when the other feels invisible, and both gradually discover that courage can move in more than one direction. Their relationship changes the atmosphere around them because it rejects the assumption that popularity must be preserved at another person’s expense.
Photo Courtesy: Jennifer Early Calvert (In BFFs, kindness becomes meaningful when someone chooses to stop, notice, and help.)
Characters Who Reveal the Whole School
Around Jennifer and Abby, Calvert builds a network of students and adults who represent different responses to harm. Ryan is socially confident and skilled at turning ridicule into entertainment. Seth reinforces the behavior, while Megan and Brooke show how exclusion can travel through looks, laughter, and group approval. They are not detached symbols; they are young people making choices inside a culture that rewards performance and punishes vulnerability.
Miss Wagner, a perceptive teacher, recognizes more than the students realize. Miss Early, the school counselor, gives Jennifer a safe place to speak and practical ways to reclaim agency. Jennifer’s parents offer love and perspective even when they cannot shield her from every hallway. Together, these characters allow the novel to explore an important truth: young people need peers who act with courage, but they also need trustworthy adults who notice patterns, listen without minimizing, and respond before isolation hardens into despair.
Faith That Moves Through Action
Christian faith is woven into BFFs through the conviction that every person possesses God-given worth. The novel does not use faith as a shortcut around pain. Jennifer still has to walk into school. Abby still has to decide where she will stand. Adults still have to intervene. Forgiveness, compassion, and purpose become meaningful because they require action rather than sentiment.
That spiritual foundation also gives the book room to discuss dignity without reducing it to popularity, appearance, talent, or achievement. Jennifer’s value is not created when other people finally recognize her gifts. It was present before the first bus ride and remains present through every test that follows. For families and faith communities, that idea provides a natural opening for conversations about how belief should shape conduct in classrooms, friendships, parties, and moments of pressure.
From Middle School Pressure to Responsible Choices
As the characters move from middle school toward high school, the stakes grow with them. Social exclusion develops into broader questions about peer pressure, self-esteem, teenage drinking, grief, loyalty, and the consequences of personal decisions. Calvert allows choices to matter. Some wounds cannot be dismissed with an apology, and some moments demand responsibility as well as compassion.
The story remains redemptive without pretending that redemption erases consequences. Instead, it follows how people respond after failure, loss, or betrayal: whether they hide, blame, harden, seek help, tell the truth, or begin making different choices. Revealing more would diminish the novel’s turning points, but its direction is clear. BFFs is interested in who young people become when life asks more of them than fitting in.
Why the Book Belongs in a Conversation
BFFs can be read as an accessible coming-of-age novel, but its strongest use may be as a conversation starter. Teen readers can recognize the pressure to belong and the uncertainty of deciding when to speak. Parents can explore the difference between asking whether school was “fine” and creating enough safety for an honest answer. Teachers and counselors can discuss the roles of bystanders, trusted adults, restorative responsibility, and practical support. Church youth groups can connect the novel’s themes of grace and purpose to the everyday ethics of inclusion.
The book’s endorsements reflect that dual literary and educational appeal. Educator Gay Roberts describes it as a quick read that students and parents affected by bullying should not miss. James Baker calls it “a story we can all see ourselves in and learn from.” Both responses point to the same strength: Calvert uses an engaging narrative to make difficult subjects discussable without turning the story into a lecture.
The Counselor Behind the Story
Jennifer Early Calvert brings decades of experience working with children and families to the page. She served Cannon School in Concord for twenty-seven years and helped establish its counseling and guidance program. Her professional work centered on connecting with students, supporting those who felt overlooked, and helping school communities address character, disability awareness, and emotional well-being.
Her commitment has also extended beyond the classroom. Calvert has spent decades participating in mission work. That combination of counseling, service, and faith gives BFFs its central perspective: intervention matters, encouragement has consequences, and a person’s future can be changed by someone willing to see possibility before it becomes visible to everyone else.
Photo Courtesy: Jennifer Early Calvert
Discover BFFs Best Friends Forever
A story of bullying, courage, faith, forgiveness, responsible choices, and the friendship that changes what becomes possible.
Douglas “Doug” Sinclair, a North Carolina real estate broker, condenses the state’s pre-license course into a focused review in his “Pre-License Student Guide,” written for candidates preparing for both the national and North Carolina portions of the real estate license exam.
The guide follows the 20 chapters of “NC Real Estate Principles & Practices,” 8th Edition, and ends with a section on North Carolina Real Estate License Law and Commission rules. Instead of long explanations, it relies on bold headings, short bullet points and page references back to the textbook, a format built for review rather than first-time reading.
The result reads like the notes a careful student would make after a semester of class: definitions, rules, deadlines and the distinctions most likely to appear on a test.
Knowing Where the Points Are
The guide closes with a breakdown of the exam itself. According to the guide, the national section contains 80 scored questions, with 60 correct answers needed to pass, while the state section contains 60 scored questions, with 40 needed to pass. Each section also includes five unscored pretest items.
The breakdown shows candidates where to spend their study time. Contracts and agency make up 16 national questions, the largest single category, and agency alone accounts for another 16 questions on the state section. On the state side, brokerage practice (12 questions) and other North Carolina laws (11) follow. Real estate math, often the most feared topic, accounts for seven national questions.
Memory Aids for Dense Material
Much of the license course consists of terms and lists that must be recalled precisely. The guide uses short acronyms to make them stick.
A broker’s fiduciary duties become OLDCAR: obedience, loyalty, disclosure, confidentiality, accounting, and reasonable skill and care. The government’s powers over private land become PETE: police power, eminent domain, taxation and escheat. The four unities required for a joint tenancy, possession, interest, title and time, become PITT.
The activities that require a license when performed for others for compensation become LLBEANS: list, lease, buy, exchange, auction, negotiate or sell. To decide whether an item is a fixture, the guide uses IRMA, short for intent, relationship, method of attachment and adaptation, and notes that intent is the most important factor.
The elements of value are summarized as DUST, for desirability, utility, scarcity and transferability. The confidential information an agent must protect becomes PTM: price, terms and motivation.
Where North Carolina Differs
A large share of the guide is devoted to points where North Carolina practice departs from other states, the kind of distinction that can decide a state exam question.
Disclosure is one example. Sellers must provide buyers with the state’s residential property and owners’ association disclosure form, and they may answer “no representation” to its questions. The guide stresses that brokers must still disclose material facts regardless of how the seller answers, even when a property is sold “as is.”
“In NC, all of the burden of disclosure is on the Agent,” the guide states.
It also lists items the North Carolina General Assembly has declared material facts, including polybutylene pipes and synthetic stucco, even if repaired or replaced, as well as meth labs. At the same time, it notes that agents are not required to disclose stigmatizing facts such as a death in the property.
Recording rules receive similar attention. A deed does not have to be recorded to be legal, the guide explains, but under North Carolina’s Conner Act, a later purchaser who records first takes priority. The guide calls it a “pure race” statute.
The Due Diligence Clock
The guide gives close attention to the North Carolina Offer to Purchase and Contract and its due diligence period. During that period, a buyer may terminate “for any reason or no reason,” but only by delivering written notice to the seller before 5 p.m. on the date the period expires. The due diligence fee is paid to the seller and is not refundable except in the case of a seller breach.
Earnest money works differently. The guide notes that it is not required, that it is not a consideration for the contract, and that a broker must deposit it in a trust account within three banking days of an offer’s acceptance.
Life After the Exam
Passing the exam is only the first step, and the guide’s license law section explains what comes next. New licensees begin as provisional brokers and must work under a broker-in-charge. To remove provisional status, the guide explains, they must complete 90 hours of post-licensing education, delivered as three 30-hour courses, within 18 months of licensure.
All licenses expire on June 30 each year, and licensees must complete eight hours of continuing education by June 10 to stay active. The guide also covers trust account rules, advertising requirements and the disciplinary powers of the North Carolina Real Estate Commission, which can reprimand, censure, suspend or revoke a license but cannot fine licensees.
A Guide Shaped by the Classroom
Sinclair has taught real estate since 2015 and founded Badger Real Estate Seminars in 2018. His teaching draws on years of instructing college mathematics students and adult learners, and he is a Real Estate Educators Association (REEA) Gold Standard Instructor.
Before real estate, he worked as a landscape architect, served as director of marketing for Andersen Consulting, held industry marketing leadership roles with Prime Computer/Computervision, and was a principal of an executive recruiting firm. He holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Boston University and Florida State University.
The guide is designed to be used alongside the course textbook rather than in place of it, with many entries pointing students to specific pages for fuller explanations. Sinclair is also co-author, with Matt Davies, of “NC Real Estate Math,” a companion handbook on the calculations covered in the pre-license course.
About the author:
Douglas “Doug” Sinclair is a North Carolina real estate broker with Keller Williams and the founder and CEO of Badger Real Estate Seminars in New Bern, North Carolina. A Vietnam veteran and former college mathematics instructor, he teaches all levels of real estate education and helps license candidates prepare for both the national and state portions of the North Carolina real estate exam.
Stories of survival, resilience, healing, and the courage to keep going.
Every childhood leaves a record, even when that record is incomplete. Some memories remain vivid for decades; others are buried beneath family silence, fragmented recollections, or official documents that tell only part of the story. For people raised amid poverty, neglect, abuse, or instability, growing older does not necessarily mean leaving those experiences behind. The work of understanding what happened, finding a sense of safety, and building an independent life may continue long after childhood ends. Memoirs make that complicated journey visible. They allow writers to revisit difficult beginnings without reducing themselves to what they endured, and they give readers room to recognize both the cost of survival and the possibilities that follow it.
The ten books gathered here approach childhood hardship from different directions. Some examine the conflicts between family loyalty and personal freedom. Others document the failures of adults and institutions entrusted with protecting children, or explore the ways trauma resurfaces in adult relationships and identities. What connects them is not a simple promise that suffering produces strength. Instead, these memoirs show resilience as a gradual, uneven process shaped by choices, opportunities, support, and the determination to find a life beyond the circumstances of one’s upbringing.
In Educated, Tara Westover recounts growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho, where formal schooling was absent from her early life. She did not enter a classroom until she was seventeen, yet her pursuit of education eventually took her to Brigham Young University and Cambridge, where she earned a PhD. The achievement is remarkable, but the memoir’s deeper tension lies in the emotional cost of questioning the beliefs and expectations of the family that raised her. Learning becomes not merely an academic pursuit but a way of deciding who she is allowed to become. A similarly complicated attachment to family runs through The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Raised amid poverty, frequent moves, and her parents’ unpredictable decisions, Walls remembers both neglect and affection. Her story resists the convenience of portraying family life as entirely loving or entirely harmful. Instead, it considers how someone can acknowledge the people who shaped them while still choosing distance, independence, and a different future.
Questions of protection and belonging become even more urgent in Etched in Sand by Regina Calcaterra. Growing up on Long Island in poverty and instability, Calcaterra and her four siblings faced circumstances that demanded responsibility far beyond their years, including periods in foster care. Her determination to keep her siblings safe gives the memoir its emotional center, while her later work in law and public service shows how early experiences can inform an adult commitment to others. Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter offers another intimate account of childhood within the foster care system. After moving through numerous homes, Rhodes-Courter eventually found permanence through adoption and later became an advocate for foster care reform. Read together, these books reveal how much a child’s sense of security depends on decisions made by adults, agencies, and institutions. They also challenge the assumption that finding a permanent home immediately resolves everything a child has already experienced.
In Finding Fish, Antwone Quenton Fisher describes a childhood marked by separation and abuse. Born while his mother was incarcerated and raised largely in foster care, Fisher faced profound instability before joining the Navy and later becoming a writer. His memoir follows the difficult movement from being defined by others’ decisions toward establishing an identity and direction of his own. The experience of abuse is also central to A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer, whose account describes severe mistreatment by his mother before he was removed from her care and entered foster care. Where Fisher‘s narrative looks toward the life he gradually built, Pelzer concentrates on the conditions of survival itself and the beginnings of recovery. Neither book invites readers to confuse endurance with an absence of pain. Both underscore that escaping a harmful environment is an essential change, but not necessarily the end of its effects.
Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford approaches childhood difficulty through the complicated bonds of family and the search for belonging. Growing up in Indiana while her father was incarcerated, Ford navigated financial hardship and strained relationships, eventually examining how love, longing, and uncertainty could exist together. Her memoir is especially attentive to questions that do not produce tidy answers: how children interpret absence, how family stories shape self-image, and how understanding can change with age. Those lingering effects become the explicit subject of What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. After experiencing abuse and abandonment in her immigrant family, Foo later received a diagnosis of complex PTSD. Drawing on her background in journalism, she combines personal recollection with research on trauma and therapy. The result expands the conversation from what happens in childhood to what it can take, years later, to recognize familiar patterns, seek help, and begin changing them.
The gap between what is recorded and what is truly lived comes into focus in Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines by Adriene Caldwell. Her childhood involved family mental illness, poverty, instability, and time in the foster care system. By bringing memories into conversation with her childhood case files, Caldwell examines how official descriptions can fail to capture the full reality of a child’s experience. Her eventual path toward education and advocacy gives the memoir a perspective that is both personal and concerned with the circumstances facing other vulnerable children. I Trusted You: A Shocking True Story by Pierre D. Chambers closes the collection with an account told from the perspective of a twelve-year-old facing physical and emotional abuse within his family and church community. Chambers explores the betrayal that follows when trusted relationships become sources of harm, while faith becomes part of his effort to break the cycle of abuse. Together, these accounts ask readers to consider not only what children survive, but who listens, who believes them, and what meaningful protection requires.
There is no single model of healing across these ten memoirs. Education gives some writers the language and freedom to reimagine their lives. For others, stability, adoption, service, advocacy, faith, or trauma-informed care becomes part of the path forward. Even when a memoir reaches a hopeful conclusion, its meaning does not depend on pretending that the past has disappeared. These authors show that resilience can involve confronting painful memories, revising inherited beliefs, asking difficult questions, and recognizing that recovery may continue alongside ordinary adult life.
For readers with similar experiences, the value of these books may lie less in inspiration than in recognition: the feeling that someone has described a struggle that is often hard to explain. For other readers, they offer a more informed understanding of childhood adversity and its lasting consequences. Above all, the collection makes room for complexity. A difficult beginning can shape a life without determining every chapter that follows, and finding the way back to yourself rarely happens in one decisive moment. It can begin with learning, speaking, remembering, seeking support, or simply deciding that the future deserves a different story.
A guard steps up to a site gate at 5:58 in the morning and taps his phone. Three cities away, a manager watches a small dot settle inside the exact boundary of the post it was supposed to reach. Nobody made a call, and no clipboard got signed.
Now rewind and picture the same morning without that tap. A guard who’s late, a log that’s missing, a client wondering why the front desk sat empty for forty minutes, and an operations lead who finds out about all of it from an angry email at 7:15.
Same business. Two very different Mondays.
The distance between those two mornings is where DPS Airem lives. This guide covers what the platform does, the features worth knowing about, the benefits teams tend to notice early, who gets the most from it, and what it costs. Read through it, and you’ll know whether it deserves a trial on your own operation.
What DPS Airem Is, in Plain Terms
DPS Airem is cloud-based employee management software built for people who work away from a desk. Tracking check-ins and check-outs, calculating payroll, assigning shifts, watching live GPS movement: all of it happens in one place, with an SOS alert module ready for the moments when something goes wrong.
Think of it as workforce management software with a field-first mindset. Plenty of HR tools quietly assume everyone sits at a laptop. This one assumes a guard is standing in a car park, a cleaner is between floors, and a technician is halfway across town with a van full of tools.
The Features That Carry the Weight
Attendance comes first, because everything else leans on it. Employee attendance software only earns its keep when the data can be trusted, and DPS Airem builds that trust from GPS verification, QR codes, and geofencing at the moment of clock-in. Someone outside the site boundary can’t pretend otherwise. Break logs and compliance tracking run beside the time clock, so policy stays visible instead of living in one supervisor’s memory.
Once people are on shift, live tracking shows where they are right now, and tracking history shows where they went across any past shift. That second one matters more than it sounds. When a client disputes coverage three weeks later, you open the record instead of the argument.
Planning sits on the other side. Managers build schedules, assign roles, and catch coverage gaps before the shift begins rather than during it. When plans change, the dispatcher moves people, and the messenger keeps every instruction in one thread you can actually search later, not scattered across ten private chats.
Security and patrol teams get a toolbox of their own: site tours, vehicle patrol, post orders, daily activity reports, and incident reports. Each one leaves timestamped proof that a task happened, which is precisely what clients ask to see when a contract comes up for renewal. If something goes wrong in the field, a guard or supervisor can fire off an SOS alert instantly, and the platform measures how fast the response arrives.
Money comes last, and it gets easier because of everything before it. Payroll runs off verified hours, not estimates. Invoices are prepared from the time recorded on timesheets, estimates live in the same system, and custom reports gather the numbers for whoever needs them.
One Platform, Several Doors
DPS Airem looks different depending on who’s holding the device. Managers work in a web dashboard where they approve requests, assign roles and shifts, and follow workflows across several locations at once. Supervisors carry a mobile app that puts attendance tracking, task management, incident handling, and SOS response in a pocket. Guards and other employees get their own mobile dashboard for viewing shifts, clocking in and out, finishing tasks, and submitting reports, plus a web portal for guards when a bigger screen helps.
Clients get a door too. A dedicated web portal and mobile app let them view reports directly, which cuts down on the phone calls that used to open with “Can you confirm?” Add-on modules extend the back-office side when a business needs more.
Role-based access keeps each person’s view focused on their own job. Secure authentication and cloud infrastructure protect the sensitive data underneath.
A Day on DPS Airem, Start to Finish
Picture a Tuesday at a security firm running twelve posts. The schedule was built days ago, so by 5:30 a.m. every guard already knows where they’re headed and when. Clock-ins start trickling in. Each one lands on the manager’s dashboard with a location and a timestamp, and anyone running late shows up as a gap on the schedule instead of a surprise.
Mid-morning, a supervisor drives between sites with the mobile app open. A patrol gets logged, a post order gets confirmed, and one guard flags a broken gate lock through an incident report that carries the time, the place, and the details while they’re still fresh. Come lunchtime, the client can open the portal and see the reporting for themselves. No phone tree required.
Afternoon brings the unplanned stuff. A guard calls in sick, so the dispatcher reshuffles coverage and the messenger carries the new instruction to the right person. Later, someone on a quiet night post feels uneasy and triggers an SOS alert. Supervisors see it right away, and the response time gets recorded.
Once the day closes, timesheets have built themselves from verified hours. Payroll has numbers to work from. The invoice for the client is a few minutes of review rather than an evening of spreadsheet archaeology.
Benefits Teams Notice First
Payroll shifts first. When hours come from verified clock-ins, the monthly reconciliation argument shrinks, because there’s simply less to dispute. Time theft loses its cover too. A rounded-up clock-out meets a map and a timestamp, and the conversation ends quickly.
Supervisors get time back. One managing partner at a field solutions company described the app as something that cuts down the back-and-forth calls between guards and supervisors. A co-founder at a patrol services firm said the difference showed up within the first week, mostly through tracking and scheduling that were easy to manage. Small comments, but they come from people who live inside the problem.
Then there’s the client relationship. Documented patrols, measured response times, and reports clients can open themselves all turn “trust us” into “here’s the record.” That shift tends to matter most when a contract is up for review.
Who Gets the Most Out of It
Security firms of every size are the obvious fit. The platform also speaks directly to corporate security teams, healthcare facilities, government offices, residential communities, and campuses. Beyond security, cleaning companies, construction crews, and field service businesses share the same core headache: people spread across locations, and nobody is able to prove where they were. Multi-site organizations feel the benefit most, since one dashboard replaces a pile of disconnected tools.
What It Costs
Three plans cover most situations, and each one starts at three users. Essential runs $5 a month and includes the dashboard, clients, security team, time clock, reporting, and GPS live tracking. Advanced is $8 a month and adds GPS Tracker Plus, tracking history, geofence, and messenger. Professional, at $10 a month, adds site tours, profile custom fields, automatic email reports, integrations, tasks, and checklists.
A 30-day risk-free trial sits on top of all of it. Thirty days is enough to run a real schedule, catch a real discrepancy, and see whether the data holds up.
Making the First 30 Days Count
A trial only helps if you test it on something real. Pick one site, ideally one with a few known headaches, rather than switching the whole company on day one. Load the real schedule, draw the geofence around the actual location, and have the team clock in through the app for a full pay cycle if the timing allows.
Run the old method alongside it for the first week or two. It sounds like extra work, and it is, briefly. But the comparison is the whole point. Where the two sets of hours disagree, you’ll find out exactly how much the old process was quietly costing in rounded minutes and missing entries.
Bring supervisors in early. They’ll be the ones living in the mobile app all day, and their feedback on tasks, checklists, and incident reports tells you more than any demo could. Then check the dashboard each morning the way you’d check the news. Patterns show up quickly: the post that’s always short on Fridays, the shift that always starts a little late.
Thirty days later you’ll have something better than a sales pitch. Your own data, from your own people, on your own sites.
Every operation has a clipboard somewhere. Maybe it’s literal, maybe it’s a spreadsheet with a clipboard’s habits. Retire it on your own terms.
The fifth season of Ukrainian Fashion Week New York | Fashion 4 Ukraine brought Ukrainian designers, fashion professionals, and creative brands to Lavan Midtown in Manhattan. The event offered a setting for contemporary Ukrainian fashion to meet an international audience, with clothing and jewelry contributing to a shared visual narrative.
Among the season’s premieres was the runway debut of Zoria Gems, the fine jewelry house founded by Oksana Zorka, who serves as its Founder and Creative Director. Presented through collaborations with Sandra & Sabrina and La Musa, the debut introduced the house’s jewelry within a sequence of evening and bridal looks.
For Zoria Gems, the presentation was an opportunity to show how fine jewelry interacts with fashion in motion. Rings, earrings, statement necklaces, diamonds, and colored gemstones became part of the runway styling, bringing attention to the relationship between individual pieces and the complete silhouette.
Photo Courtesy: Zoria Gems
Fine Jewelry as Part of the Fashion Story
A runway presentation gives jewelry a different context from a display case or an individual photograph. Pieces are seen alongside fabric, movement, proportion, and the person wearing them. At Ukrainian Fashion Week New York, this relationship formed the basis of the Zoria Gems presentation.
The house presented two jewelry collections in collaboration with Sandra & Sabrina and La Musa. Across the looks, jewelry helped shape the visual character of the clothing, creating points of focus around the face, neckline, and hands. Statement pieces brought a stronger presence to the styling, while other combinations allowed the dialogue between garment and jewelry to remain more understated.
Evening and bridal dressing provided complementary settings for the debut. Evening looks offered space for expressive combinations of gemstones and statement jewelry. Bridal silhouettes introduced a different mood, with diamonds and pearls contributing to an interpretation of occasion dressing that felt personal as well as ceremonial.
Together, these settings illustrated the versatility of fine jewelry within a fashion presentation. The same attention given to the cut and shape of a garment could extend to the placement of an earring, the line of a necklace, or the position of a brooch.
Collaborations with Sandra & Sabrina and La Musa
The collaborations placed Zoria Gems within a broader conversation about how a complete look is created. Clothing and jewelry were presented together, allowing each element to influence the way the other was perceived.
With Sandra & Sabrina and La Musa, the jewelry house explored the connection between decorative detail and overall fashion identity. Earrings, necklaces, and statement pieces became part of the styling vocabulary, helping connect individual garments to the atmosphere of the presentation.
The presence of Zoria Gems also extended beyond the models walking the runway. Olga Ivanidi, host and organizer of Fashion 4 Ukraine, appeared in a complete jewelry set from the house. The designers of Sandra & Sabrina and Ksenia of La Musa likewise wore looks complemented by Zoria Gems jewelry.
These appearances gave the presentation continuity. The jewelry could be seen both within the runway sequence and on the people involved in bringing the event and its collaborations together. That broader presence made the house part of the evening’s overall aesthetic and showed its pieces in several distinct personal contexts.
Photo Courtesy: Zoria Gems
A Personal Interpretation of Bridal Luxury
The bridal looks created with La Musa brought particular attention to the relationship between jewelry and feminine silhouettes. Within this part of the presentation, diamonds and pearls offered a visual language closely associated with bridal dressing, while the styling explored how familiar materials could be arranged in a more individual way.
One of these looks was personally presented on the runway by Oksana Zorka. She wore a complete Zoria Gems set featuring diamonds and pearls, including earrings, a necklace, and a statement brooch fastened to the skirt.
The placement of the brooch gave the look a distinctive focal point. Positioned on the skirt, it extended the jewelry styling beyond the face and neckline and connected it directly to the garment’s silhouette. The detail demonstrated how a jewel can participate in the composition of an entire outfit.
Pearls and diamonds brought different visual qualities to the ensemble. The softness associated with pearls complemented the brilliance of diamonds, creating a balance within the bridal look. Seen together with the silhouette, the pieces offered a contemporary interpretation of bridal luxury without relying on a single statement accessory.
Zorka’s appearance also gave the debut a personal dimension. As Founder and Creative Director, she stepped into the presentation herself, wearing the jewelry within the fashion context she had helped bring to the runway. Her participation connected the house’s creative direction with a visible, individual expression of its style.
From the Runway to a Closer Encounter
Alongside its runway presentation, Zoria Gems hosted a pop-up where guests could discover and purchase pieces from the brand’s collections. This added another dimension to the debut, connecting the visual impact of the show with an opportunity to encounter the jewelry more closely.
The two formats served complementary purposes. On the runway, the pieces were experienced as part of complete looks, viewed through movement and styling. At the pop-up, attention could return to the individual jewel and its place within a guest’s own wardrobe.
This connection between presentation and personal discovery was especially relevant to a fine jewelry debut. A runway look can suggest a new way to wear a piece, while a closer encounter allows that inspiration to become more individual.
A New York Chapter for Zoria Gems
The Manhattan debut marked a new chapter in Zoria Gems’ development in the United States. Within Ukrainian Fashion Week New York, the house brought its jewelry into a setting shaped by Ukrainian creativity and New York’s international fashion culture.
The presentation gave the brand’s philosophy, The Art of Rarity, a visible expression through diamonds, colored gemstones, pearls, and carefully composed fashion looks. Its strongest moments emerged from the relationships between these elements: a necklace and a neckline, a brooch and a bridal skirt, a founder and the jewelry she chose to wear.
Through its collaborations, runway presentation, and pop-up, Zoria Gems introduced a view of fine jewelry as part of a complete personal style. Its New York debut placed that idea at the center of the fashion story, with jewelry contributing to how each look was seen, worn, and remembered.
Stevenson Square has completed its first phase in Soundview, the Bronx, adding 58 affordable cooperative homes and 117 apartments for older residents. State housing officials report an average co-op sales price of approximately $204,000. The development combines income-restricted homeownership, senior rental housing, and additional residential construction planned for the existing Stevenson Commons campus.
Key Takeaways
New York State announced the completion of Stevenson Square Phase I on October 14, 2026, confirming 175 homes across three new residential buildings.
The $53 million homeownership component contains 58 cooperative apartments with an average sales price of approximately $204,000.
Cooperative homes are designated for eligible households earning up to 80% of Area Median Income.
The completed phase also includes 117 affordable rental apartments intended for residents aged 62 and older.
Additional affordable housing and community facilities are planned as part of the larger Stevenson Commons redevelopment.
Stevenson Square reached a construction milestone on October 14, 2026, when New York State Homes and Community Renewal announced the completion of its first phase in the Soundview section of the Bronx.
The development includes two four-story cooperative buildings and a separate six-story residence for older adults. Together, the buildings provide 175 homes within a residential campus undergoing a broader redevelopment.
The average cooperative sales price of approximately $204,000 is a central detail of the state’s announcement. However, that figure applies only to the homeownership component and doesn’t represent a fixed purchase price for every apartment.
The $53 million reported development cost also applies specifically to the cooperative buildings. The larger Stevenson Square project has been described as a multistage redevelopment valued at approximately $1 billion.
Stevenson Square Co-ops Average $204,000 Across 58 Homes
Stevenson Square’s homeownership component consists of two newly constructed buildings at 1843 and 1847 Seward Avenue. The buildings contain apartments ranging from one to three bedrooms.
According to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the cooperative homes include 11 one-bedroom apartments, 31 two-bedroom apartments, and 16 three-bedroom apartments.
Two-bedroom apartments represent the largest share of the development, accounting for 31 of the 58 homes. The remaining units provide options for households with different space requirements, subject to the applicable eligibility rules.
New York State reported an average sales price of approximately $204,000 for the completed cooperative development. Individual prices can differ depending on apartment size and the conditions established under the affordable homeownership program.
A cooperative apartment also differs from a conventional condominium. Purchasers generally acquire shares in a corporation that owns the building, together with occupancy rights associated with a particular apartment.
Monthly ownership costs can include mortgage payments, cooperative maintenance charges, utilities, and other expenses. The average purchase price therefore doesn’t represent the full monthly cost associated with an individual residence.
The apartment buildings include in-unit washers and dryers, dishwashers, bicycle storage, and landscaped front and rear yards. These features were identified in the city’s original development specifications.
The completed buildings are also part of an all-electric first phase that has achieved Enterprise Green Communities certification, according to the state’s October announcement. The project includes energy-efficient heating and cooling equipment and a solar array.
Camber Property Group developed the cooperative homes in partnership with Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County. The nonprofit’s role includes homebuyer education and assistance associated with the ownership program.
The completion announcement confirms the construction milestone but doesn’t establish how many cooperative apartments remain available for purchase.
Income Limits Shape Eligibility for Stevenson Square Buyers
Stevenson Square’s cooperative apartments are income-restricted, with eligibility tied to Area Median Income, commonly called AMI.
New York State’s October 14 announcement identifies households earning up to 80% of AMI as the intended buyers. Earlier city project documents described income categories ranging from 70% to 80% of AMI across the apartment types.
The distinction matters because eligibility is determined through the requirements established for each affordable housing opportunity. Household size, income, and other program conditions can affect whether an applicant qualifies.
Area Median Income is used by New York City’s affordable housing programs to establish income thresholds. The applicable dollar amounts can vary by household size and the year in which the eligibility guidelines are issued.
Prospective buyers also need to distinguish income qualification from the financial requirements associated with purchasing a cooperative apartment. Meeting an income threshold doesn’t automatically establish mortgage eligibility or confirm that a household can cover the necessary ownership expenses.
The cooperative development was previously marketed through New York City’s affordable housing application system, with published materials describing apartment prices, household eligibility, and the selection process.
However, the October 2026 completion announcement didn’t identify a new application window. Earlier sales information shouldn’t be treated as confirmation that applications are currently open.
The distinction between construction completion and housing availability is particularly important for income-restricted developments. A completed building may already have applicants undergoing eligibility review, selected purchasers, or residents preparing for occupancy.
Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County has been involved in the homeownership component through its partnership with Camber Property Group. The developer identifies education and assistance for homebuyers as part of that arrangement.
The cooperative buildings are financed through programs intended to support affordable ownership opportunities. Their eligibility requirements remain separate from the rental conditions established for the senior housing component.
117 Senior Apartments Expand the Completed Bronx Development
The first phase of Stevenson Square also includes a six-story residential building containing 117 affordable apartments for older adults.
New York State identified residents aged 62 and older as the intended population in its October 2026 announcement. The senior apartments form a separate rental component within the completed development.
The city’s original construction documents described the residence as serving households earning at or below 50% of Area Median Income. Those plans also designated 36 apartments for formerly homeless older adults.
The senior building was designed to include shared spaces and services suited to its intended residents. The city’s March 2024 announcement identified a community room, fitness area, laundry facilities, bicycle storage, and a fifth-floor outdoor terrace among the planned amenities.
The development team also partnered with Regional Aid for Interim Needs, known as R.A.I.N., a Bronx-based organization providing services to older adults.
Under the original service plan, R.A.I.N. was expected to assist residents through counseling, referrals, advocacy, assessments, and organized recreational and educational activities.
The senior rental apartments differ from the cooperative homes in both their occupancy arrangements and eligibility criteria. Residents of the senior building rent their apartments, while qualifying cooperative purchasers obtain ownership shares associated with their homes.
Other affordable housing developments in the Bronx include the 96-unit Casanova Residence in Hunts Point, which began construction in August 2026 with a separate supportive and affordable rental housing model.
While the Casanova Residence remains a project under development, Stevenson Square’s October announcement confirms completion of its first residential phase.
The Soundview development also benefits from services already present within Stevenson Commons. According to state housing officials, existing facilities include a supermarket and the Stevenson Family Health Center.
The health center offers primary care, dental care, behavioral health services, pharmacy services, and additional community support.
Nearby transportation and recreation options include Soundview Park, Pugsley Creek Park, subway connections, and the NYC Ferry. These neighborhood facilities are distinct from the additional recreational spaces planned within the larger redevelopment.
Stevenson Square’s $1 Billion Redevelopment Extends Beyond Phase I
Stevenson Square forms part of a larger plan to redevelop underutilized sections of Stevenson Commons, an established residential property in Soundview.
The original complex was developed through New York’s Mitchell-Lama housing program during the 1970s. It contains 948 residential apartments, according to New York State Homes and Community Renewal.
Camber Property Group acquired the property in 2017 and subsequently prepared a redevelopment plan incorporating additional housing and community facilities.
Rather than replacing the entire existing residential complex, the first phase introduced three new buildings along Seward Avenue. The development added cooperative homeownership opportunities and rental housing for older adults to the established campus.
Camber Property Group Principal Rick Gropper characterized the completed phase as “the beginning of a multi-phase $1 billion transformation of this site” in the state’s October 14 announcement.
The full redevelopment plan includes additional affordable rental apartments, new recreational areas, pedestrian connections, and community facilities.
Earlier city project descriptions identified approximately 30,000 square feet of planned community facility space, along with tennis courts, a walking path, a sensory playground, and landscaped outdoor areas.
Those features belong to the broader campus plan and shouldn’t be confused with amenities already completed as part of Phase I.
The distinction between planned development and finished construction also appears across New York City’s affordable housing project pipeline, which includes projects on city-owned parcels at different stages of development.
Stevenson Square’s completed phase represents a separate project on the existing Stevenson Commons campus, with subsequent housing phases still planned.
The cooperative buildings received financing from multiple public and private sources. New York State Homes and Community Renewal provided $11.6 million through its Affordable Homeownership Opportunity Program.
The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development contributed approximately $21.2 million through its Open Door program. Another $3.8 million came through Resolution A capital funding, according to the state announcement.
These amounts relate to the homeownership portion of the completed phase. The senior rental component has a separate financing structure, and neither figure should be treated as the total cost of the broader redevelopment.
State officials also confirmed that the completed first phase uses all-electric building systems. Sustainability measures include solar equipment and energy-efficient appliances, heating, and cooling systems.
The development’s plans identify additional affordable rental buildings in future phases, but the October 14 announcement doesn’t establish that all of those buildings or associated community facilities have been completed.
For Stevenson Square, the confirmed milestone remains the delivery of 58 affordable cooperative homes and the inclusion of 117 senior rental apartments in the first phase. The larger redevelopment continues to involve additional planned residential and community construction.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many affordable homes are included in Stevenson Square Phase I?
Stevenson Square Phase I includes 175 homes across three newly constructed buildings in Soundview, the Bronx. The development consists of 58 cooperative homes and 117 affordable rental apartments for older adults.
What is the average price of a Stevenson Square co-op?
New York State Homes and Community Renewal reported an average cooperative sales price of approximately $204,000 in October 2026. Individual apartment prices may vary, and the average doesn’t include all ongoing ownership expenses.
Who is eligible for the cooperative apartments?
The cooperative homes are designated for qualifying households earning up to 80% of Area Median Income. Specific eligibility depends on applicable household-size, income, and homeownership requirements.
Are Stevenson Square apartments currently accepting applications?
The October 14, 2026 completion announcement didn’t provide a new application deadline or confirm current vacancies. The cooperative apartments were marketed previously, so earlier application information doesn’t establish present availability.
Is the entire Stevenson Square redevelopment finished?
The October announcement concerns the completed first phase, including the cooperative and senior residential buildings. Additional affordable rental housing and community facilities remain part of the broader redevelopment plan.
Picture the Monday after a restructuring. A department that used to have three managers now has one, the reporting dashboard hums along nicely, and every person on the team still wants a manager who knows their name. That scene is playing out in offices everywhere as the Great Flattening strips layers out of corporate org charts, and Brian Watkins, founder of BTOM Consultants, believes companies are approaching it from the wrong direction.
Projections suggest up to 20% of firms will use AI to significantly reduce middle management ranks by the end of 2026, and Amazon stands out as a prominent example of the push toward fewer layers. (Source: Fast Company, 2026) Any executive team reading that projection has reason to wonder where its own org chart lands.
Businesses are eliminating middle management positions to cut costs and simplify operations, and they want the savings to fund artificial intelligence. The managers being removed belong to a workforce already struggling with declining engagement and inadequate professional development.
The pressure to flatten makes sense on its face, since executives want faster decisions and fewer approval chains, and AI can absorb a surprising amount of administrative work that once ate up managerial time. Employees still need the same amount of guidance after the org chart shrinks.
That leaves a question worth asking before the next round of cuts. Did companies do enough to help these managers succeed before deciding their positions were unnecessary? A smaller org chart only works when the managers who remain have been equipped for the larger job, and the evidence on how well that preparation has gone deserves a close look.
How the Great Flattening Is Changing Middle Management
The logic behind flattening gets clearer once you list the tasks involved. If software can prepare reports, track performance, coordinate workflows, and deliver information straight to employees, a manager whose week consists mostly of forwarding information and sitting in status meetings has good reason to find out what AI can do for them.
Some of this housecleaning is overdue, because every approval process and reporting requirement should have to justify itself, and so should every management position. The trouble starts when a company treats the administrative slice of the job as the entire job.
Management at its best combines coaching and accountability with a working knowledge of the people on the team, which makes it hard to capture in an automated report. The fallout from removing it includes weaker communication between executives and frontline employees and reduced organizational context, and fewer layers also mean fewer chances to develop future leaders. (Source: Fast Company, 2026) Those risks deserve a seat in the planning meeting before anyone assumes a smaller structure will perform better.
Go back to that department with one manager in place of three. On paper the savings look clean, with employees getting information faster and senior leadership receiving a single consolidated performance report covering the whole department. The remaining manager now owns every individual relationship on the team, and the conflicts, feedback conversations, development discussions, and expectation-setting that used to be split three ways all land on one calendar.
Cutting a management position redistributes its responsibilities, often onto senior executives who absorb more direct reports and operational tasks, and employee coaching and accountability can erode as a result. (Source: Fast Company, 2026) The work itself survives the restructuring, and where it lands determines whether anyone does it well. A tidy org chart says nothing about who is coaching the newest person on the team.
Manager Engagement Is Falling at the Worst Possible Time
Global manager engagement dropped from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, and the steepest annual decline came between 2024 and 2025, when it fell from 27% to 22%. (Source: Gallup, 2026)
Individual contributors sat at 19% in 2025, which leaves managers with an advantage of only three percentage points. (Source: Gallup, 2026) Managers have traditionally reported higher engagement than the people they supervise, and that cushion has thinned considerably.
Overall employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020, and lower engagement among managers accounts for much of the downturn since 2023. (Source: Gallup, 2026) Low engagement cost the global economy approximately $10 trillion in lost productivity that year. (Source: Gallup, 2026)
Organizational flattening may have contributed in South Asia, where manager engagement fell eight points in 2025 and the share of workers in management roles also dropped, and manager engagement can slip as spans of control grow larger. (Source: Gallup, 2026)
Low manager engagement shows up directly in how teams are led, since someone who struggles to stay engaged in their own work may find it harder to give employees consistent attention and to recognize problems early. A company that adds direct reports to a manager in that condition is adding load to the person with the least reserve.
The Manager Training Problem Started Long Before AI
Watkins knows the challenge of becoming a manager without preparation because he lived it. Like many professionals, he moved into management after strong results as an individual contributor, and those results earned the promotion. Leading people called for a different skill set that he had to build on his own.
His new job centered on setting expectations, building relationships, giving feedback, and helping his team deliver. Without adequate preparation, he went looking for the knowledge and hands-on experience to improve, and that journey shaped his approach to management development and his decision to establish BTOM Consultants in 2020.
His story reflects a wider pattern. Of people entering management positions in the UK, 82% had received no formal management or leadership training, and one in three respondents had left a job because of a negative workplace culture. (Source: Chartered Management Institute, 2023) Those findings come from more than 4,500 UK workers and managers, so they describe the UK specifically.
Technical expertise and people management draw on separate skill sets. A talented salesperson may understand customer relationships and revenue targets exceptionally well, and the engineer everyone calls when a complicated system breaks may be a genuine hero in a crisis, and neither accomplishment guarantees the skill to address an employee’s declining performance or conduct a difficult conversation.
Companies promote their top performers and cross their fingers that management ability shows up on its own, and newly promoted managers end up overwhelmed, with teams that pick up on it through unclear expectations and inconsistent communication. The root cause is training, since the individual has been handed a different job with nobody teaching it. Eliminating the position leaves that weakness in place and may simply transfer the same responsibilities to another employee who is equally unprepared.
Management Judgment Matters More as AI Handles the Admin Work
The best argument for AI in management is time, since managers can use AI tools to organize information, prepare meeting agendas, summarize performance data, and draft development plans, which frees up hours for the responsibilities that call for personal attention.
Generating information and deciding what to do with it are separate jobs. An AI system can flag that an employee has missed several deadlines, and working out why takes a manager who knows the person, since the cause could be unclear expectations, competing priorities, insufficient training, or a personal circumstance that calls for sensitivity.
Anyone who has tried to get empathy out of a dashboard knows how that goes. Software can draft the performance review, and a manager still has to sit down with the employee for the difficult conversation and repair any damage to the working relationship afterward.
Aside from technical integration, the strongest predictor of whether U.S. employees use AI is whether their direct manager actively champions it. (Source: Gallup, 2026) That puts managers at the center of AI adoption, since every new tool changes somebody’s daily routine and someone has to make sense of that change for the team.
Someone has to explain the changes, address concerns, set realistic expectations, and help employees understand what the technology means for their responsibilities, and the payoff for the team depends on the skills managers bring to the hours AI hands back.
What Companies Should Fix Before Cutting Middle Management
The Great Flattening gives organizations a reason to reconsider what they expect from managers and how they prepare people to meet those expectations, and the first step is a clear look at what managers do all day. When a position exists mostly to pass information between departments, automation or process redesign may be the right fit. When that same manager also resolves operational problems, those responsibilities need a clear owner, and the same goes for the coaching and accountability the role provides.
An honest audit of the fundamentals of people management comes next, starting with whether employees understand what success looks like, whether managers give useful feedback before problems become serious, whether team members get chances to discuss their development, and whether difficult conversations happen when they should. The answers give leadership a clear read on management effectiveness.
Effective manager training centers on actions managers can practice and refine. Watkins applies that idea in his Great Manager Operating System, which is designed to help first-time, frontline, and middle managers develop repeatable management habits. A manager struggling with employee accountability may need to sharpen how expectations are communicated before work gets assigned, and someone facing repeated performance issues may need practice delivering direct feedback without getting defensive or dodging the conversation. Skills like these grow through practice and reflection, as managers apply what they learn on the job and look honestly at the results.
Formal development pays off, as trained managers are more likely than untrained managers to report concerns or wrongdoing and to feel comfortable managing significant workplace changes. (Source: Chartered Management Institute, 2023) For smaller businesses wondering how to train new managers without a dedicated learning and development department, practical coaching can be especially valuable, since it gives new managers a way to build skills on their own timeline.
Better management is the most productive response to a restructuring wave, and managers can start investing in their own development today; the next one-on-one or any chance this week to give useful feedback is a good place to begin. Whatever number of managers an organization keeps after the Great Flattening, every team still needs effective management. If you are a frontline or middle manager facing larger teams or growing pressure from AI-driven restructuring, visit BTOM Consultants and explore Brian Watkins’ Great Manager Operating System. Start building the practical management skills your team needs before the next reorganization makes the job even harder.
A journey through three sacred traditions and their distinct accounts of spiritual freedom
Cooper Neitzel’s Dharmic Pulse invites readers to hear Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism in the vocabularies through which those traditions understand spiritual freedom. Its most compelling question concerns the reader’s own habits: how much can we learn when we allow an unfamiliar faith to challenge the categories we bring to it?
Drawing on sacred texts, explanatory prose, and personal reflection, Neitzel develops an approach that gives his writing a clear place within interfaith spiritual literature. The book’s breadth is matched by a deliberate structure, making a complex comparative inquiry accessible to readers willing to slow down and listen.
When Spiritual Freedom Changes The Question
A familiar religious word can offer comfort. It can also prevent us from hearing something unfamiliar. In the book, Cooper Neitzel asks readers to notice that tension before beginning a journey through Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. His opening question sets the stakes. “What if the promised land is not first a place to inherit, but a bondage to be released from?”
That question places Volume IV of The Covenant Pulse Series at a turning point. Earlier volumes developed the series through sacred journeys, spiritual practice, and the Abrahamic religious family. Here, the author enters traditions whose accounts of freedom require a different vocabulary. The resulting book follows a demanding but approachable inquiry into what binds human beings, how a life is formed, what liberation means, and how help is received along the way.
The subtitle, Pathways Through Three Traditions, Four Dimensions, One Sacred Field, describes both its scope and its ambition. Neitzel wants readers to encounter each tradition closely enough to recognize its own questions. The shared field is a space for attentive comparison, with room for disagreement and for religious identities that remain distinct.
Four Dimensions That Guide The Reading
Bondage, Discipline, Release, and Gift organize that inquiry. These are the author’s working questions, rather than a claim that the traditions describe themselves through an identical four-part system. The distinction matters because it allows the book to compare without making its framework more authoritative than the people and texts it examines.
Bondage asks what keeps a person entangled. Discipline considers the practices through which spiritual life takes shape. Release examines the freedom sought within a particular tradition. Gift attends to what is received through teaching, compassion, divine favor, or other forms of help that the tradition itself recognizes.
Each dimension becomes more precise as the book proceeds. Hindu avidyā, Buddhist dukkha, and Sikh haumai enter the discussion with different histories and meanings. Likewise, mokṣa, nirvāṇa, and mukti receive attention as particular accounts of liberation. Readers learn why similar English glosses can conceal substantial differences in belief.
Hinduism And The Many Paths Toward Liberation
The Hinduism chapter introduces a religious world with significant internal variety. Neitzel examines ignorance, action and its consequences, the cycle of rebirth, and the different ways Hindu schools understand the relationship between the self and ultimate reality. The reader encounters differences among philosophical and devotional traditions, rather than a single generalized account of Hindu belief.
The Bhagavad Gītā gives the discussion a human point of entry. Arjuna’s paralysis before battle brings questions of duty, action, knowledge, and devotion into a consequential setting. Neitzel uses that encounter to explain paths of spiritual formation, showing how a demanding philosophical question can emerge from a person’s inability to decide what to do next.
Knowledge, devotion, disciplined action, and contemplative practice receive attention as distinct paths. Their variety helps the reader understand why liberation cannot be reduced to a single technique. The chapter also considers how divine favor and received help operate within Hindu devotion, alongside the effort required of the practitioner.
Buddhism And The Habits That Sustain Suffering
The Buddhist discussion changes the terms of the inquiry. Neitzel turns to suffering and unsatisfactoriness, craving, clinging, conditioned existence, and the possibility of release. He examines the Noble Eightfold Path as an ordered cultivation of ethical conduct, attention, and wisdom.
The writing repeatedly brings abstract concepts back to patterns a reader can follow. A moment of craving becomes clinging. Repeated clinging shapes habits, and habits influence the way a life is experienced. Neitzel’s explanations give those relationships movement while keeping them within the Buddhist account he is presenting.
The chapter also attends to differences among Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Vajrayāna, and Pure Land traditions. Compassion, spiritual friendship, the gift of teaching, and other-power broaden the discussion of help along the path. This range allows Buddhist life to appear in its diversity, including forms that an account focused only on individual meditation might overlook.
Sikhism And Freedom Within Ordinary Responsibilities
Sikhism brings remembrance, the Guru’s word, service, and community into focus. Neitzel examines haumai, the self-centered ego, alongside nām simran, remembrance of the divine Name, and sevā, selfless service. Liberation is considered within a life that includes work, family, and responsibility to others.
The community kitchen, or langar, makes that relationship visible. Its openness and shared service connect theological ideas with an institution through which people feed and meet one another. The chapter gives household and communal life substantial spiritual weight, making the Sikh contribution essential to the book’s larger inquiry into how freedom is lived.
A Storytelling Instinct Within Religious Nonfiction
Dharmic Pulse is religious nonfiction, and its narrative strength lies in the way it directs an inquiry. The book begins with a question that the author’s existing framework may be unable to answer. It then gives the reader the conceptual preparation, encounters, and comparisons needed to reconsider that framework. Understanding develops through the sequence.
The reader is asked to discover whether a recognizable pulse can be heard across a change in religious language as substantial as the movement from covenant to liberation. Each chapter makes the next question more specific. The momentum comes from the reader’s changing understanding of the problem.
Neitzel’s recurring images of thresholds, rooms, houses, and journeys make this progression easier to follow. A reader can picture entering a space as a guest, listening long enough to understand what matters there, and returning home with a clearer sense of what has been learned. The metaphors help organize demanding material without replacing it.
The human stakes emerge in the details, from Arjuna confronting the demands of action to a household shaped by remembrance and service. Such examples give the writing a capacity to connect ideas with lived choices.
Research That Remains Visible To The Reader
The book supports that narrative movement with an extensive source apparatus. Its discussions draw on the Bhagavad Gītā, Upaniṣads, Buddhist scriptures, and Guru Granth Sahib, among other texts. Chapter notes identify translations and secondary scholarship, while a glossary and selected references give readers routes for further study.
Neitzel’s note on sources explains why terminology and translation require care. Sanskrit, Pāli, and Punjabi words are introduced with explanations, and meaningful differences between related forms are retained. English helps orient the reader, but the original vocabulary continues to carry weight.
The three-part organization reinforces this approach. Part I develops the listening framework. Part II gives each tradition sustained attention. Part III draws comparisons after that groundwork. The sequence makes the author’s method visible, as a reader first encounters the particular tradition, then considers what comparison can responsibly illuminate.
Why The Book Matters To The Wider Series
Dharmic Pulse extends a project that changes emphasis from volume to volume. Promised Lands begins the Covenant Pulse inquiry through sacred journeys and the relationship between calling, wilderness, and arrival. Living the Pulse turns toward spiritual formation and the practices through which faith enters daily decisions.
Abrahamic Pulse, Volume III, examines Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Latter-day Saint Restoration, and the Bahá’í Faith through Promise, Lineage, Land, and Unity. Volume IV then asks what the project can learn when those organizing categories no longer provide its starting point.
This development gives the book a consequential role in the series. The author subjects his own comparative idea to a more difficult test. He allows the questions raised by Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism to determine how the volume proceeds, making the series capable of learning from the encounter it proposes.
Readers can approach the book as an introduction to its particular inquiry, while those familiar with the earlier volumes will recognize how much has changed. The guiding rhythm of Listening, Learning, Living continues, but the vocabulary and the expectations carried into that rhythm become more carefully examined.
An Author Who Names His Own Faith
Neitzel openly identifies himself as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His perspective is part of the book’s context, and readers are told where he stands. He also distinguishes that standpoint from the authority of the traditions he is describing.
The introduction presents the Restoration as a witness within the conversation. The author’s own tradition becomes more visible during the later comparative work, while the Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh accounts are first allowed to develop within their own terms. That order gives his personal reflection a basis in the encounters that precede it.
The closing reflection reveals the effect of this method on the writer. “I did not need to pretend sameness to be grateful,” Neitzel writes. It is a concise statement of the book’s central ethical possibility: a person can hold a conviction and still learn from a tradition they have not joined.
A Promising Voice In Interfaith Spiritual Literature
The book gives readers concrete reasons to watch Neitzel’s development as an author in comparative religion and spiritual nonfiction. He can organize a large body of material around a question, sustain that question across distinct religious worlds, and return to it with greater specificity. His voice combines personal investment with a willingness to be corrected by what he studies.
His storytelling ability is especially useful in this niche. A philosophical distinction can become more memorable when a reader understands the situation in which it matters. The book moves between sacred texts, conceptual explanation, practices, and the author’s own response, allowing the subject to remain intellectually demanding while giving the reading an emotional and narrative direction.
Who The Book Is For
Readers interested in world religions will find a focused comparison with enough detail to encourage further study. Latter-day Saints curious about other traditions will find a clearly named point of departure. Readers within Hindu, Buddhist, or Sikh communities can examine how an outside author has tried to hear their texts and practices.
The book also offers material for discussion groups and readers concerned with interfaith relationships. Its central questions can guide conversation without requiring participants to share a theology. What has been misunderstood? Which words need more explanation? What similarities survive close attention, and where do differences remain essential?
The Invitation That Remains After The Final Page
The book closes by returning responsibility to the reader. The traditions it examines continue beyond the book, carried in communities, texts, teachers, and practices..
That gives Neitzel’s project its most persuasive literary purpose. The book makes the reader’s way of listening part of the story. Its final invitation is to approach another sacred world with enough patience to hear its language, and to return to one’s own life with the questions that encounter has made possible.
Photo Courtesy: Cooper Neitzel (Dharmic Pulse cover artwork from the author’s official website.)
About the Book
Dharmic Pulse: Pathways Through Three Traditions, Four Dimensions, One Sacred Field is Volume IV of The Covenant Pulse Series by Cooper Neitzel. Published by Hemingway Publishers. First edition, 2026. Paperback ISBN 9798950690228. Hardcover ISBN 9798952508408.
About Cooper Neitzel
Cooper Neitzel writes about sacred texts, religious history, and spiritual formation. His work includes The Promised Land Series and The Covenant Pulse Series. Writing from a Latter-day Saint perspective, he engages other traditions through close attention to their texts and practices.
