Author: Gretchen Legler
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 159534960X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
“Woodsqueer” is sometimes used to describe the mindset of a person who has taken to the wild for an extended period of time. Gretchen Legler is no stranger to life away from the rapid-fire pace of the twenty-first century, which can often lead to a kind of stir-craziness. Woodsqueer chronicles her experiences intentionally focusing on not just making a living but making a life—in this case, an agrarian one more in tune with the earth on eighty acres in backwoods Maine. Building a home with her partner, Ruth, on their farm means learning to live with solitude, endless trees, and the wild animals the couple come to welcome as family. Whether trying to outsmart their goats, calculating how much firewood they need for the winter, or bartering with neighbors for goods and services, they hone life skills brought with them (carpentry, tracking and hunting wild game) and other skills they learn along the way (animal husbandry, vegetable gardening, woodcutting). Legler’s story is at times humbling and grueling, but it is also amusing. A homage to agrarian American life echoing the back-to-the-land movement popularized in the mid-twentieth century, Woodsqueer reminds us of the benefits of living close to the land. Legler unapologetically considers what we have lost in America, in less than a century—individually and collectively—as a result of our urban, mass-produced, technology-driven lifestyles. Illustrated with rustic pen-and-ink illustrations, Woodsqueer shows the value of a solitary sojourn and both the pathway to and possibilities for making a sustainable, meaningful life on the land. The result, for Legler and her partner, is an evolution of their humanity as they become more physically, emotionally, and even spiritually connected to their land and each other in a complex ecosystem ruled by the changing seasons.
Author: Gretchen Legler
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 9781571312822
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
"McMurdo Station, Antarctica, is home to eighty-mile-per-hour winds, minus seventy degree temperatures, and months of near-total darkness. Sent to Antarctica as an observer, Gretchen Legler tells the story of her season spent at McMurdo Station. Populated by people from all walks of life - bankers, MBAs, therapists, carpenters, scientists, laborers, and military brass - the individuals that Legler meets have gone to Antarctica to escape everything from parking tickets to angry spouses. Hoping to get away from the complexities of her own life, Legler arrives at McMurdo Station with the intention of researching the landscape; what she finds, instead, is a zany population of people." "Part sociological study, part historiography, and part love story, On the Ice is an exploration of one of the most unexplored places on earth and the people who are drawn to it."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Gretchen Legler
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595349421
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
All the Powerful Invisible Things is an eloquent memoir of self-discovery and a chronicle of outdoor life. Refusing “impoverished ideas of passion,” Gretchen Legler writes about the complexities of being a woman who fishes and hunts, as well as about the more intimate terrain of family and sexuality. The result is a unique literary confluence filled with the ineffable graces of the natural world. She writes: “I used to hate being a woman. When I was young, I believed I was a boy. Throughout college I never knew what it was like to touch a woman, to kiss a woman, to have a woman as a friend. All of my friends were men. I am thirty years old now, and I feel alone. I am not a man. Knowing this is like an earthquake. Just now all the lies are starting to unfold. I don’t blend in as well or as easily as I used to. I refuse to stay on either side of the line.” Like many women, Legler finds that her presence identifies the unmarked boundaries of where she is and is not welcome, learning when it is advantageous to pass as male and when it is better to disappear into the woods and trees around her. This contrasts sharply with her experience of nature as a source of spiritual sustenance, a space of unparalleled freedom where she can lose herself in something larger. Twenty-five years after it was first published, All the Powerful Invisible Things remains a highwater mark for women writing about the outdoors and is one of the few works to tackle the intricacies of gender identity and sexuality with transcendental aplomb.
Author: Alex Gino
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545956269
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Alex Gino, the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of Melissa, is back with another sensitive tale based on increasingly relevant social justice issues. Jilly thinks she's figured out how life works. But when her sister, Emma, is born deaf, she realizes how much she still has to learn. The world is going to treat Jilly, who is white and hearing, differently from Emma, just as it will treat them both differently from their Black cousins. A big fantasy reader, Jilly makes a connection online with another fantasy fan, Derek, who is a Deaf, Black ASL user. She goes to Derek for help with Emma but doesn't always know the best way or time to ask for it. As she and Derek meet in person, have some really fun conversations, and become friends, Jilly makes some mistakes . . . but comes to understand that it's up to her, not Derek to figure out how to do better next time--especially when she wants to be there for Derek the most. Within a world where kids like Derek and Emma aren't assured the same freedom or safety as kids like Jilly, Jilly is starting to learn all the things she doesn't know--and by doing that, she's also working to discover how to support her family and her friends. With You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P!, award-winning author Alex Gino uses their trademark humor, heart, and humanity to show readers how being open to difference can make you a better person, and how being open to change can make you change in the best possible ways.
Author: P. J. O'Rourke
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 1555847102
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller: “The funniest writer in America” takes on the global economy (The Wall Street Journal). In this book, renowned political humorist P. J. O’Rourke, author of Parliament of Whores and How the Hell Did This Happen? leads us on a hysterical whirlwind world tour from the “good capitalism” of Wall Street to the “bad socialism” of Cuba in search of the answer to an age-old question: “Why do some places prosper and thrive, while others just suck?” With stops in Albania, Sweden, Hong Kong, Moscow, and Tanzania, O’Rourke takes a look at the complexities of economics with a big dose of the incomparable wit that has made him one of today’s most refreshing commentators. “O’Rourke has done the unthinkable: he’s made money funny.” —Forbes FYI “[O’Rourke is] witty, smart and—though he hides it under a tough coat of cynicism—a fine reporter . . . Delightful.” —The New York Times Book Review
Author: Helen Hamlin
Publisher: Islandport Press
ISBN: 9780967166254
Category : Maine
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In this critically acclaimed Maine classic, first published in 1945, Helen Hamlin writes of her adventures teaching school at a remote Maine lumber camp and then of living deep in the Maine wilderness with her game warden husband. Her experiences are a must-read for anyone who loves the untamed nature and wondrous beauty of Maine's north woods and the unique spirit of those who lived there. In the 1930s, in spite of being warned that remote Churchill Depot was 'no place for a woman', the remarkable Helen Hamlin set off at age twenty to teach school at the isolated lumber camp at the headwaters of the Allagash River. She eventually married a game warden and moved deeper into the wilderness. In her book, Hamlin captures that time in her life, complete with the trappers, foresters, lumbermen, woods folk, wild animals, and natural splendour that she found at Umsaskis Lake and then at Nine Mile Bridge on the St. John River.
Author: Carmen Maria Machado
Publisher: DC Comics
ISBN: 1779510810
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
Shudder-To-Think, Pennsylvania, has been on fire for years. The coal mines beneath it are long since abandoned. The woods are full of rabbits with human eyes, a deer woman who stalks hungry girls, and swaths of skinless men. And the people in Shudder-to-Think? Well, they’re not doing so well either. When El and Octavia wake up in a movie theater with no memory of the last few hours of their lives, the two teenage dirtbags begin a surreal and terrifying journey to discover the truth about the strange town that they call home. Like so many women in Shudder-to-Think before them, all they have is a void where the truth once was. But as time passes, El finds herself needing to know more about what has happened, while Octavia wants nothing more than to forget the forgetting. Can these two teens reconcile their differences before the horrible things lurking beneath their town emerge and swallow them whole? Collects The Low, Low Woods #1-6.
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1665936673
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 37
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Book Description
Jane meets a new friend in this third book in legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin’s bestselling Catwings chapter book series, now with a new look! Fluffy, orange Alexander is the oldest, biggest, loudest, and strongest of all the Furby kittens. Everyone in his family thinks he’s so remarkable that they call him “Wonderful Alexander” and spoil him to pieces. But one morning, when Alexander bravely sets out to explore the world on his own, he finds himself stuck in a tree and unable to get down. It’s up to Jane, the youngest of the Catwings, to rescue him! Now if only Alexander could do something wonderful for her in return…
Author: Aiden Thomas
Publisher: Swoon Reads
ISBN: 1250313988
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
When children start to go missing in the local woods, a teen girl must face her fears and a past she can't remember to rescue them in this atmospheric YA novel, Lost in the Never Woods from the author of Cemetery Boys. It’s been five years since Wendy and her two brothers went missing in the woods, but when the town’s children start to disappear, the questions surrounding her brothers’ mysterious circumstances are brought back into the light. Attempting to flee her past, Wendy almost runs over an unconscious boy lying in the middle of the road... Peter, a boy she thought lived only in her stories, asks for Wendy’s help to rescue the missing kids. But, in order to find them, Wendy must confront what’s waiting for her in the woods. Praise for Aiden Thomas and Cemetery Boys: “This stunning debut novel from Thomas is detailed, heart-rending, and immensely romantic.” —Mark Oshiro, author of Anger is a Gift “Aiden Thomas masterfully weaves a tale of family, friendships, and love in a heartwarming adventure full of affirmation and being your best self." — C.B. Lee, author of Not Your Sidekick
Author: Suzanne Stryk
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595349626
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
There’s no such thing as the middle of nowhere. Everywhere is the middle of somewhere for some living being. That was Suzanne Stryk’s mantra as she journeyed through her home state on a mission to re-create Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. The founding father’s work surveys the region’s natural history and, as one might expect from a philosopher-statesman living more than 230 years ago, is fact packed and formally written. The Middle of Somewhere takes a different approach—to interpret Virginia land and life from a contemporary perspective and an artist’s point of view. Stryk kayaks pristine swamps in river country, wanders the galleries of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, hikes rocky trails crisscrossing the Appalachians, and strolls the dusty streets of old coal towns. In these sacred spaces she encounters frogs, millipedes, ravens, dragonflies, sparrows, turtles, and many other species that claim a particular place as home. Weaving in historical anecdotes and personal memories, Stryk relates her encounters with all of these beings in their “somewheres.” The creatures in their habitats and the people she meets are characters in the book, a tapestry of essays, lush sketches, and ephemera. Stryk’s multimedia collages, composed of dead bugs, tourist pamphlets, road maps, pressed leaves, rusty farm equipment, animal bones, and handwritten directions, all artistically arranged over USGS topographic maps, bring the narrative to life. Stryk’s personal reflections and conversational tone make readers feel as if they are traveling across Virginia with a friend, one who is at times funny and at other times deeply reflective. As we accompany her, she challenges us to travel slowly, tread lightly, and look closely at each somewhere that defines a place.
