In The Curious Adventures of Fletch Highfield, author Jacob Tuttle follows a renowned adventurer's expedition to discover the lost bird of the Amazon. The book has the air of an old novel about the famous explorers of the new world while maintaining a fresh and contemporary perspective on what it means to be human, to remain open to new discoveries, and to see the beauty in the world that surrounds us; integrating the rock-climbing culture of our day into a fantastic world of imagination filled with new plants, creatures, society, and language. Tuttle keeps readers on their feet, eagerly waiting to see what adventure Fletch Highfield's heart for the underknown brings him on next. In this story of adventure, we follow Fletch Highfield, renowned explorer and discoverer of lost relics, on his quest to find the lost bird of the Amazon. Fletch sets off to South America aboard the eccentric steamboat St. Isabelle, alongside loyal friend and fellow adventurer Sam Johnson and his sister Abigail, newspaper reporter and accidentally consistent travel companion of Highfield and Co. The impressive ship has an amazing number of things to keep a traveler busy and entertained, but for the trio of this story the goal of discovery was significantly more important. During the voyage Fletch, Sam, and Abigail meet D. L. Martin, the confident and companionable captain of the St. Isabelle. He points Fletch to a potential source of information about the lost bird of the Amazon in the ship's library, which Fletch pores over, gaining integral clues to the bird's origin and potential location. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes that night! Our hero Fletch is tossed overboard returning to his cabin during a storm and is whisked away by the waves. Hope is not lost however, as a very damp Fletch wakes up in a net under a waterfall in a place he's never seen before. In fact, no human had found that particular valley before. A misfortune turned miracle has led Fletch Highfield to a tropical valley full of old magic, new companions, and hopefully the lost bird. The story that unfolds deep in this hidden valley of South America brings the reader into a world of adventure, friendship, connectedness, and beauty, not to mention a wall surrounded by legend waiting to be climbed. As Maxwell Highfield, Fletch's brother warns in the foreword, we also cannot demand the reader to follow Fletch's remarkable adventure. It is incredibly dangerous and we cannot be held liable should you attempt to come along; however, diving into the unique and beautiful world of the lost valley of the Amazon, in search of a bird thought to be extinct, alongside new creatures and characters you won't find anywhere else, might just be worth the risk.
These poems seek out the intimate stranger in ourselves and each other, finding as well the sense of absence alive in the midst of all deeper experience. That may be beyond our rationale understanding, but it is opportune, even compelling, for the imagination and for love, its scars the beauty marks of a joy fleeting and universal. These poems report that oldest and latest news.
Jessup's wry vernacular reprise of Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 recalls the Bard's advice to the heartbroken: if in the midst of regretful or sorrowful introspection we can bring to mind a beloved friend, "all losses are restored and sorrows end." Steadfastness in the face of sorrow is the essence of this slim chapbook. In the opening poem, a stalwart pink geranium stands firm against the chilly arrival of winter in southern Indiana. Perched on its jaunty, slender cane, it refuses to founder. In the volume's wonderful concluding poem, "Unripe Saint," the poet is gathering blackberries. She decides not to pick one blackberry, but to leave it on the bush, pausing instead to admire it, regarding it as a tiny instance in the unity and continuity of the natural world - blackberries, birds, bears, saints - and by extension, the unity and continuity of human lives and life stories.The poet-songwriter Paul Simon was one of Rebecca's heroes. There is no place called "Sorrows End," but an island off the mid-coast of Maine that she often visited as a child remained a sacred place for her throughout her life, even as she saw it "slip-sliding away," as precarious lands' ends - and personal and global lives and destinies - will do. Twenty years after the death of her beloved brother, she reports that in the world as she finds it, "Poverty increases and rumors gain speed."The volume's middle sections include several skillfully rendered dramatic narratives and monologues featuring literary and Biblical figures (Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats, Rachel's mother, Eve). "Long After, Eve Returns" is a brilliant poem - a delightful touch Disneyesque, and also quite moving. Jessup imagines a middle-aged Eve slipping past the fearsome guardian angel's flaming sword and revisiting Eden, where she finds her animal friends still happily residing ("... the leopard, the gray wolf, the gazelle / stroll over to nuzzle greetings, ask me / how I am, to thank me for their names ..."). In "Earth-like planet discovered only 20 light-years away," she imagines a handful of fleeing survivors on a post-apocalyptic spaceship looking wistfully back at the ruins of their earthly home. Rebecca Jessup believed that her poems speak for themselves. Her persistent themes - love and loss, friendship and family, selfless compassion, sorrow for human and animal suffering and for the perilous state of the natural world - are of course common to much contemplative poetry and are in keeping with her profoundly humanistic worldview. The presence of a highly conscious intellectual and literary life is quietly evident throughout her work, but her poems are not obscure, nor are they profane, and are appropriate to read to or with children. Her poetry is deeply spiritual, grounded in religious values, and is also worldly wise - like all literature of the first rank, rich with detailed, insightful, telling observation.Rebecca Jessup was a masterful poet, fully in technical control of her craft. Her poems are beautiful, as immediate and accessible as beautiful music, with breathtaking lyric texture and resonance. If you love poetry, read Rebecca Jessup.
This book is a daughter's late-life piecing together of her father's short life. These were years of lost time, time when she knew only the silence surrounding him. He died in 1952 from tuberculosis, leaving behind a wife, a five-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. Like so many who suffered from tuberculosis in that time1 he left no words about what he went through, his worries, his pain. Her mother and other family,members did not mention TB, perhaps to protect the children, or themselves, perhaps out of the too-common shame that accompanies stigmatized illness. No one wanted to remember him as ill, and yet his disease consumed a third of his life and afflicted all his movements, where he worked, where he lived, whom he could embrace. The book relies on memories, photographs, and the few stories family and genealogy tell. And the account, of necessity, researches TB, his TB, likely derived from the cows he loved and milked in New England. This disease would lead him to lose a job, live in two sanatoria (the quarantine strategy of the first half of the twentieth century), and risk a painful and difficult surgery so he could have a life. Although this story is unique, its outlines are not. TB, although now nearly forgotten in the United States despite continuing cases, was the leading infectious disease in the world before Covid. It has not yet been conquered. This story is both an old one and one likely to be repeated in places and times to come.
Silly Seaside Stories is a collection of 22 humorous short stories that vary in length. All have some connection with the seacoast (mostly of Maine). The target readership includes those who may be becalmed, fog-bound, relaxing at anchor, and/or looking for some water-related diversion requiring easy reading and escape from the present. Some of the stories are inspired by historical events but dare to provide additional historical (hysterical?) details not mentioned in traditional history texts. Other stories focus on important local events or issues, and the final story highlights some concerns about modern marine electronics. Readers are introduced to some (un)forgettable characters with diverse (perverse?) skills and propensities. Through the medium of the written word, readers will find themselves imaginatively transported across coastal waters by sailboat, lobster-boat, mooring barge, steam-powered launch, kayak, canoe, steamboat, bateau, and hot-air balloon.Attentive readers will also attend town meetings, parades, historical events, rivalry, conflict, earthquake preparation, a memorable gridiron contest, and a misguided guide trip or two. Silly Seaside Stories protagonists will try to rescue the English language, rescue a wayward brat, rescue Benedict Arnold's expedition, rescue football players, rescue...well, some characters really don't deserve to be rescued! Most animals in these stories survive just fine without attempts at human rescue.Coastal navigators will be challenged to find their way to Carport, Stonarbor, Mooseport, Bufflehead Bay, and Truly Miniscule Blueberry Island, while avoiding coming to grief on Goode Reef, Redcoat's Revenge, or The Reckoning. Readers of Silly Seaside Stories may expect to be edified by the collective wisdom of characters such as Dewey Kaire, Hilda Toupet (Too-pay), Bug Light, Golley Klimbo, Major Minor, and others as they weave their way through dilemmas, conflicts, challenges, and thwarted plans.Weather plays a role in some stories-fog, calms, contrary breezes, nor'easters, and a blizzard-and some endings are a wee bit explosive. All in all, this eclectic collection of short stories will keep readers intrigued, amused, and (hopefully) awake!For those with an appetite for mind relaxation, Silly Seaside Stories provides a delectable combination of fantasy and piracy, with a generous helping of lunacy!
When I was very young and began to wonder about the world, I tried to answer the question, "Who are you?" My early answer was, "I am a child of God." When asked my name, I stated factually, "Barrow." I knew that's where I came from, the house I lived in and that's who I belonged to. I did not answer, Shirley. That name did not seem to belong to anyone else, but a stranger who did not accept my Sunday School answer, would know who I was if I answered Barrow. My family was right there with me: living proof of my identity. Years can be spent trying to know who you really are, not just what family and society dictate. Many years of experiences with neighbors, friends, and workmates complete a pleasing picture that was not easily seen in youth. The author invites the reader to share her journey and perhaps compare and consider their own unique quest of identity. As a young one the author chose to consider herself an Earl. This identity originated from her mother's playful naming of their humble home as Lee Heights. Mother and daughter were both trying to lift their spirits from the harsh reality of an unfinished, poorly heated shelter with no running water or electricity. Events in the story take place from the nineteen thirties up to the present day. Life stories are always unique and when shared, even with family members raised in the same household in the same era of time, one can discover savory surprises and hidden wonders. The Earl of Lee Heights is an invitation to the reader to explore the life of a New England colored girl and hopefully, be inspired you to share your own story with others.
Kelville-by-the-Sea, an outwardly quiet seaside town on the northeast coast of Scotland, has hired a new senior police officer, Helen Griffen. Hardened by a career spent policing in the city of Edinburgh, Helen looks forward to a peaceful last posting before retirement. But within her first few weeks on the job, Helen discovers that she's inherited a police sergeant who lives in the police station under an assumed name; a seven-year-old missing person case, or maybe a death; an American ballet troupe about to descend on the town, the ballet star a secretive enigma; and the mention of DNA tests sending a local family into a panic. Clearly, there is more to Kilvellie than sea glass, ice cream, and fish and chips.Helen finds her moral compass shifting: not just hers, but that of her private investigator son Adam who she brings in to make discreet inquiries about the missing person, a teenage girl. With Helen's predecessor fled to sunny Spain, she has no one else to trust. Together they learn that behind the town's calm exterior hides the story of a World War One-era German soldier, the Scottish nurse he married, and how they established a successful glass business and set in motion a cascade of events and side-taking that still resonates.Adam's suspicion falls on an elderly man who often hobbles out to a cliffside bench to gaze at the North Sea, lost in memories; he is a well-known presence in the town. Helen learns that the man lives in a nearby luxury care home, but how he pays for it is another mystery. She has to tread lightly, though. To complicate matters for Helen, the elderly man's son is Helen's predecessor at the police station, and his grandson is her sergeant: both are implicated in the teenager's disappearance. The innocent-seeming sea glass that people travel from afar to collect has its own hidden story. That weathered red glass was once a poppy in a war memorial window, and that lettered piece was once the base of a unique glass vase. How the glass reached the beach in the first place, Helen learns, is the true tragedy. But seeking justice for decades-old misdeeds could simply prolong an ancient dispute.Prologue:It should be a simple decision, Alistair thought, turn right or turn left. He sat behind the wheel of a right-hand-drive car, and despite spending several weeks in Scotland, he was still feeling his way with the controls after his long experience with American cars. The driveway heading west, away from the seaside chapel, led to a two-lane road going north and south: right turn to the north coast and the ferry to Orkney, left turn toward the rolling fields of Fife and his temporary home in the village of Finlay.He knew the choice was in his hands, but he also knew the circumstances leading up to it were a century old and complex. His decision a few days ago to pick up some sea glass from a beach. The choice to go to that beach stemming from his career choice a decade ago, to become a private investigator. Someone in America calling him, saying, since you're in Scotland anyway, can you help me with an assignment? The person in America calling because of a young woman born more than two decades earlier, her survival uncertain, her background a mystery....
Sea Turtle Breaking ThroughSwimming and pushing hard through the daily tightness, teasing oxygen from the oceanmy loggerhead turtle is determined to gain mileage and not take forever to get safely ashore.She must be vigilant watch out for predators and escape from a sea lion to find a homeon a sandy beach and lookfor a safe place to lay her eggs.She did not burrow like a clam on the bottom of the ocean.Instead, she smashesthrough the roaring blue-green waves. With her bright determined body,she is strong of heart, breaking through all setbacks, knowing time is running out.If she arrives on the sand she will haulherself up the beach at night and lay her fragile eggs.ContentsPart OneOur Community of Dairy Cows//1 Oak Tree Monarch//4 Black-Capped Chickadees in Madison//6Hunger Drives Evolution//8 Japanese Cherry Tree-Sakura//10 Lucca Biodynamic//11Wounds of War//13It's Complicated//15Landscape of Change//16 Beloved Adino//18 Milford Track//21Butterflies Rock the Block//23A Galaxy of Worlds, Boreal Conifer Forest//24 Columbia Quindio Wax Palm Trees//26 Watching Three Blue Leviathans//28A Geyser Erupting//30Deacon Grave's Native Wildflower Walk//32 Part TwoThe Fightback of the Kirkland Warbler//37 Black Birds Fly//38Hiking Along to Acadia//40Imperiled Rhythms of the Great Barrier Reef//42 The End of the Line//44Snowball the Cockatoo Grooves//47 Family//49Celestial Divination//51 Star Viewpoint//54Starry Sky Connections//56 Moon Gazing//58Hannah//59 Alyssa//61Visit from my Grandson//63Integrity and Dignity from Deep Within//64Good Luck and Safe Crossing//66White-Breasted Nuthatches//68 Our Orchard//69Breaking Through//70Lakewood Ranch-Another World
The Applause of Science is a poetry collection that explores nature in diverse environments through the lens of science. The poems pay homage to Walt Whitman, whose sage appreciation of the amity between poetry and science made him the first American poet to tackle boldly the problem of reconciling these two seemingly disparate fields. As a poet of the natural world, Whitman tried to understand nature as accurately and thoroughly as possible.Leaves of Grass is Whitman's central work and one of the most important books in U.S. literary history. He envisioned this magnum opus in 1855 as a living, growing, organic being of its own, and Whitman himself oversaw six significantly different editions of the book during his lifetime. Each edition until 1892 had many similarities to its predecessor but contained substantial textual variations, from poems that were added or edited out to revisions of old poems, the shifting and recombination of existing ones, and differing layouts. However, Whitman's 1855 applause of science--his exclamations, Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstrations! and Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth!-resonate throughout all six editions.The Applause of Science consists of seven parts. The first is REDUCTIONISM, a set of poems on the molecular biology of nature and several scientific hypotheses on the topic. RAIN, the second part, analyzes water-the substance of all life- in its myriad forms and appearances. In FLORIDA RIVER, the role of water as habitat for Florida's plants and animals is examined. MAINE TIDES lyrically transports the reader to the coastal summer haunts of Maine, where creatures and habitats stand in sharp contrast to those described in part five, FLORIDA GULF COAST. Part six, BARTRAM'S TRAVEL, is inspired by the Floridian places and creatures which stimulated William Bartram's great nature work, Travels, and the many people who followed in Bartram's footsteps seeking out the plants and animals he described. Written from my current residence in Maryland, ENVOI, the final part, includes poems based on the changing seasons. This collection reflects my belief that the arts and sciences inform our experience and appreciation in our unending exploration of nature.-Thomas Peter Bennett, 2021
In a world encouraging innovation Tom Fallon presents literature as it grew from the great art revolution of the early 20th Century with a primer of his experiments and innovations with literary form in Creation Now With Words. Fallon presents his many experiments with literary form as he was affected by the art revolution, modern jazz, experimental classical music, Off-Off Broadway theater in NYC and modern American writers such as Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Dick Higgins, Bern Porter and others. With quotations from Paul Cezanne, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and other visual artists of the art revolution Creation Now With Words encourages the freedom of the creative individual to explore and innovate with literary form as their individuality demands. The book ends with references for exploration.¿ForewordCREATION NOW WITH WORDS is a primer for encouraging independent thought and research relative to literary, word, form, based on the creative revolution in the arts which took place during the early 20th Century.Nothing is permanent. HeraclitusThere is no must in art because art is free.Wassily KandinskyThose artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. Where the power house of all time and space - call it brain or heart of creation - activates every function; who is the artist who would not dwell there?Paul KleeWhat I write, as I have said before, could only be called poetry because there is no other category in which to put it.Marianne MooreI encourage a writer to create, experiment and invent, to fail and succeed, with literary, word, form, to embrace the freedom which exists in each person's unique created individuality.Yes, there are other serious considerations for a writer such as integrity of language, communication, life truth, which I will not relate here. These must not be forgotten -Tom Fallon
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