The Tale of Two Mothers

HILLTOP MANSION

What is a chateausque-styled mansion built between 1889 and 1895, nestled on 175,000 square feet, 8,000 acres estate in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, and featuring 250 rooms and considered the largest privately - home in the United States? It is none other than George Washington Vanderbilt's home, the Biltmore. The Biltmore Estate is worth unimaginably between $1.2 and $1.35 billion dollars. This includes the value of the mansion, which is worth between $200 and $350 million dollars, and the 125,000 acres of land that comprise the rest of the estate, which are worth around $1 billion dollars. The current global economic crisis is one that has provided common people with a glimpse into the world of finance and economics, especially with the fact that the value of homes and properties is somehow tied into the dynamics of the economy of a nation. One lesson that many of us have learned from the current economic crisis is that somehow the value of real estat...

THE MIRROR OF TRUE TRANSFORMATION

We are used to looking at life l as if we are looking in the mirror. What we often see in the mirror is not reality but rather a reflection of it. The mirror does not reflect the true self, but only reflects what it sees. And when you do not like what you see then you begin to distort your reflected self. Then the reflection gradually becomes a distortion of your true self. The above phenomenon is known as self-delusion. Self-delusion does not bring true transformation. It actually takes you farther away from it. It is hard to achieve true transformation if you are living in the state of self-delusion. It should become clearer why the makeup and cosmetic surgery industry is a multi billion dollar industry and still climbing. You do not have to look at it too hard to notice that many of our popularized celebrity cosmetic transformations still have situations in their lives that leave them untransformed....

OVERBOARD

Real life couple Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell light up the screen in "Overboard (1987). Joanna Stayton (Goldie Hawn) is an idle rich woman who fell overboard her luxury yacht just to be rescued by a passing garbage barge. The comedy of the movie “ Overboard ” is that of error and the irony of unexpected change. Within a twinkle of an eye, Joanna went from being on the deck of a posh yacht to being on the deck of a garbage barge. She went from being Joanna, an idle rich wife, to being Annie, the assumed wife of a carpenter [Kurt Russell] and the "mother" of four unruly boys. Though hilarious in the movie, this is the type of change that we neither expect nor even think about. The story of Joanna is a comedy that will make anyone laugh, but the story of Jonah on the other hand is not a comedy to make anyone laugh. It is the tragedy of a disobedient prophet who changed the direction of God for his life with his own direction just to end up at a destination h...

INSPIRATIONAL FILES

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