Book Description
Barry Lopez asked 45 poets and writers to define terms that describe America’s land and water forms — phrases like flatiron, bayou, monadnock, kiss tank, meander bar, and everglade. The result is a major enterprise comprising over 850 descriptions, 100 line drawings, and 70 quotations from works by Willa Cather, Truman Capote, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, and others. Carefully researched and exquisitely written by talents such as Barbara Kingsolver, Lan Samantha Chang, Robert Hass, Terry Tempest Williams, Jon Krakauer, Gretel Ehrlich, Luis Alberto Urrea, Antonya Nelson, Charles Frazier, Linda Hogan, and Bill McKibben, Home Ground is a striking composite portrait of the landscape. At the heart of this expansive work is a community of writers in service to their country, emphasizing a language that suggests the vastness and mystery that lie beyond our everyday words.
Customer Reviews:
Home Ground.......2007-07-17
Everything Barry Lopez touches is guaranteed quality reading. "Home Ground" a wonderful reference for understanding various geographical/landscape features. Pulling the reference to same from literature onto the same page as the definition is a brilliant idea. I enjoy opening it and reading it at random and also referring to it to refresh myself on terms.
A Beautiful Book.......2007-05-23
If you have a passion for the land, for the language, for fine writing, for earth's mysteries, and for peculiarities of places; and especially if you like books that are simply well-wrought objects, this is a truly beautiful volume. Trust to accident, and crack it open anywhere - you will be enlightened about some little place or feature you likely never knew existed. A true treasure.
Home Ground.......2007-04-04
The format of this interesting exploration of the landscape lends itself to those occasional free moments when one wants a connection with something of worth. Here is a wonderful blending of history, language and the land. Home Ground deserves a permanent place on the coffee table.
Nature Lover from Portola Valley loves Home Ground.......2007-01-23
I'd recommend this book to anyone who reads widely and loves to discover the derivation of geographical terms pertainig to nature. What is unique about this book is the input from 45 well known writers to define unique American landscape terms. I ordered 3 copies for all my family located in the Pacific Northwest and they agree that this book is a great resource.
Landscapes and Language.......2007-01-12
The book defines (with illustrations) terms used to describe land features, such as barranca, grand bois, quaking bog. It is primarily a book to dip into for fun or to consult as a reference. If you like descriptive terms (e.g., meander scar) or puzzling friends with new words, you will like this book.
Book Description
This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of places in their culture. Apache conceptions of wisdom, manners and morals, and of their own history are inextricably intertwined with place, and by allowing us to overhear his conversations with Apaches on these subjects Basso expands our awareness of what place can mean to people.
Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first sustained study of places and place-names by an anthropologist, explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than thirty years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names—where they come from and what they mean to Apaches.
"This is indeed a brilliant exposition of landscape and language in the world of the Western Apache. But it is more than that. Keith Basso gives us to understand something about the sacred and indivisible nature of words and place. And this is a universal equation, a balance in the universe. Place may be the first of all concepts; it may be the oldest of all words."—N. Scott Momaday
"In Wisdom Sits in Places Keith Basso lifts a veil on the most elemental poetry of human experience, which is the naming of the world. In so doing he invests his scholarship with that rarest of scholarly qualities: a sense of spiritual exploration. Through his clear eyes we glimpse the spirit of a remarkable people and their land, and when we look away, we see our own world afresh."—William deBuys
"A very exciting book—authoritative, fully informed, extremely thoughtful, and also engagingly written and a joy to read. Guiding us vividly among the landscapes and related story-tellings of the Western Apache, Basso explores in a highly readable way the role of language in the complex but compelling theme of a people's attachment to place. An important book by an eminent scholar."—Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.
Explores the connections of place, language, wisdom, and morality among the Western Apache.
Customer Reviews:
Moral sites.......2007-09-13
What do people make of places? Basso's opening sentence is a good example of what the Apache call `letting one's mind have room'. As we read through the chapters of the book Basso continues to add layers to the meaning of this opening question. It allows us to reflect on various uses of the word `make'. We make sense of places by interpreting them. We make places intelligible by foregrounding them. We make use of places; as sign posts or land-marks through the use of descriptive naming. We make places or constitute them as sites or repositories of learning; we invest them as placeholders for morality tales or homilies. We make places vital; we invest them with agency, we enchant them, animate them, in the spirit of golems; we take a piece of earth and through magic or metaphysics we bring it alive, giving it a mission and a life of its own.
Wisdom sits in places. The Apache are a good example of virtue ethics. This is a theory of ethics, usually based on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which argues against an ethical universalism and in favor of a particularism. It foregoes the quest for nomothetic foundations and looks instead to the development of certain skills or character traits. Aristotle created a catalogue of areas of behavior or traits with a continuum of possible dispositions. The virtuous behavior was the means between the two extremes of each continuum. Thus the virtue of bravery was somewhere in the range between cowardice and foolhardiness or irrational voluntarism in the face of impossible odds or a meaningless risk.
Aristotle's concept of phronesis finds an interesting parallel in the Apache moral imagination. Phronesis is a meta-virtue; it is the ability to choose the right action for each particular event; the ability to find the virtuous means between vicious poles. It is the essential skill for particularism which is the theory that the right action, the correct moral choice is particular to each unique event. It is opposed to the universalist proposition that there are sets of moral propositions or codes that we can apply in a covering law model. Universalism holds that when two of our moral codes clash we resolve the dilemma by applying a meta-rule, most commonly a deontological (Kantian) or utilitarian proposition.
The Apache's sense of wisdom is a good example of a pragmatic ethics informed by a set of virtues that are learned and continually developed throughout their life's journey. In the first chapter we note how each speaker brings the homily (the moral lesson associated with a place name) forward, making it their own, fleshing it out. One imagines that each speaker and hearer of place names is expected to silently immerse themselves in each homily; making it real by seeing it happen. The act of giving vision to the oral narrative is a process of developing layers upon layers of particular exemplars of the lesson. It is thus internalized and carried forward for the next use. As one gains wisdom one becomes more proficient at seeing when and where to apply these lessons.
This is similar to the thought of the American pragmatist and logician, C. S. Peirce, who proposed a fallibilism about knowledge, truth, and scientific results. He felt that we were always discovering more and that a full statement of any putative universal law was always deferred. Peirce's original pragmatism differed from what James and Dewey later made of it. For Peirce we expanded our sense of a truth through a process of discovering layers upon layers of particular applications and gradually gaining more of an understanding of the wider truth. But his sense of fallibilism posited rich moral concepts such as justice or duty as essentially contested concepts.
We have maps in our heads. There are other interesting parallels with the ancient Greeks besides virtue ethics. There is a significant body of study regarding Plato's thought on the spoken and written word. Plato argued that reality resides in absolute and eternal forms. Thus the impressions available to our senses are imitations that is but a shadow of these eternal truths; they confuse us and should not be trusted. Worse still are the imitations of imitations; thus his polemics against poetry, art, and the written word. It would be interesting to combine this with the study of texts in the 20th century to look at the Apache's preference for maps in the head. Barthes, Derrida and others all expanded our notion of what can serve as texts and it might be interesting to look at Apache use of places through some of those lenses.
In addition there are interesting parallels with the sophists. Although Plato and Socrates succeeded in creating our contemporary disdain for sophism, recent work in the study of Isocrates and others brings a new appreciation of certain tenets of sophism. The sophists exhibited some similarities to the Apache notions of epistemology. They both saw the elders and ancestors as the source of wisdom and warrants for knowledge to be used for current problems. They both argued that the knowledge of the past resided less in universal laws than in practices of the ancestors; actual responses to past dilemmas that are best accessed through interpretation rather than a rote use of the covering law model or a slavish rehearsal of rigid and dogmatic rituals.
They both thought that knowledge (as justified true belief) was discovered and ultimately ratified and warranted by the voice of the majority; the interpretation that found the most general favor. The sophists proposed that vigorous debate in an open forum of citizens is the most epistemologically sound form of inquiry. Their best speakers would take both sides on various propositions of what the ancestors would have done in the current crisis. The goal was to make the best possible argument for all options and let the citizenry decide.
Both the ancient Greeks and the Apache continued to observe religious rituals but it would also be interesting to compare characteristics of their religious cosmology, the role of the gods, and their associations with natural entities and nature in general.
A Must Own for collectors of Apache Culture.......2006-08-20
Anthropologists, language students, and Native American culture afficionados will find this book, and any by Keith Basso, written links into a cultural past which struggles to exist today. As the Western Apache tribes become more modern, the information found in this and other Keith Basso writings, become necessities in the preservation of traditional Apache culture; with the exception of the knowledge of a few hundred very traditional Apaches still living in Arizona.
Wisdom Sits in Places.......2005-09-26
This book was mediocre at best. Although Keith Basso did provide some insight into why the Apache people cherish their land, I felt that Basso kept on saying the exact same thing in every sentence. I had the point of the entire book by the time I was ten pages into it, and it kept on going, therefore making me lose my concentration on what I was reading.
strong and thorough examination.......2004-12-01
What do people make of places? This is the central question examined by Keith Basso in his ethno-linguistic study of the relationship between language and landscape among the Apaches of Cibecue, on the Fort Apache Reservation in central Arizona. Basso, a professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, has spent over 30 years conducting field work among the Western Apaches. His publications concerning this group include articles on language, patterns of silence in social interaction, witchcraft beliefs, and ceremonial symbolism, among others. The idea for Wisdom Sits in Places stemmed from a study conducted between 1979 and 1984, in which Basso, with the help of a grant from the National Science Foundation and the guidance of the Apaches, conducted a study of Apache places and place-names; how the Apache refer to their land, the stories behind the place-names, and how these place-names are used in daily conversation by Apache men and women. The result is a stunningly informative account of the use of landscape and language in the social interactions of the Western Apaches.
Basso divides his book into four sections: Quoting the Ancestors, Stalking with Stories, Speaking with Names, and Wisdom Sits in Places. Each chapter's focus is to examine how landscape and language serve distinct purposes in Western Apache society. Basso incorporates the oral history of, and discussions with, local Apaches, as well as his formal training as an ethnographer-linguist, to explain the underlying themes of this book.
First, Basso introduces the reader to the idea of place-names and in the Western Apache construction of history. As conceived by the Apaches, the past is a "well-worn `path' or `trail' which was traveled first by the people's founding ancestors and which subsequent generations of Apaches have traveled ever since" (31). The ancestors gave names to places, based on events that occurred there. Regardless of the physical changes in the landscape that occurred over time, the story of what took place, as well as the place-name, was passed down through generations and serves as a connection between the people and their ancestors.
Second, Basso examines how the language and the land are "manipulated by Apaches to promote compliance with standards for acceptable social behavior and the moral values which support them" (41). The historical tales of place-names are without exception morality tales, intended to influence patterns of social action. Their purpose is to serve as warnings, criticisms, and enlightenment for those who are behaving improperly; not in accordance with the Apache way of life. The telling of a historical tale is "intended as a critical and remedial response" to an individual's having committed one or more social offenses. Apaches contend that if the message is taken to heart, a lasting bond will have been created between that individual and the site at which the events in the tale took place. In short, the land, accompanied with its historical tale, "makes the people live right" (61).
Third, through the act of "speaking with names", place-names can be condensed "into compact form their essential moral truths" (101). "Speaking with names" is considered appropriate only under certain circumstances, generally to enable those who engage in it "to acknowledge a regrettable circumstance without explicitly judging it, to exhibit solicitude without openly proclaiming it, and to offer advice without appearing to do so" (91). Evoking images of a particular place and narrative thus replaces a more direct form of advice or criticism, with "a minimum of linguistic means" (103).
Finally, with the guidance of his Apache friend, Dudley Patterson, Basso examines the path of wisdom in Western Apache society. Patterson explains there are two mental conditions, "steadiness of mind", and "resilience of mind", which lead to a third and most desirable condition, smoothness of mind. These three conditions are not innate; therefore, one must work on one's mind in order to gain wisdom. To work on one's mind, "one must observe different places, learn their Apache place-names, and reflect on traditional narratives that underscore the virtues of wisdom" (134). A resilient mind, according to Patterson, does not "give in to panic or fall prey to spasms of anxiety or succumb to spells of crippling worry" (132). A steady mind is "unhampered by feelings of arrogance or pride, anger or vindictiveness, jealously or lust" (133). Steadiness and resilience give way to a sense of "cleared space" or "area free of obstruction", conditions necessary for smoothness of mind. Only those who continue on the trail of wisdom their whole lives come closest to having a smooth mind, and are "able to foresee disaster, fend off misfortune, and avoid explosive conflicts with other persons" (131). Thus, wisdom is intertwined with the idea of survival through the consistent and thoughtful evocation of landscape and language.
Keith Basso and the Western Apaches of Cibecue have provided readers with an insightful and provocative account of the connection between language, land, and a people's cultural history. Wisdom Sits in Places opens the door for future research on place-names by shedding light on a previously overshadowed topic in anthropological studies. Basso's dissection of certain stories and social interactions can be overwhelming and a bit dry, but his purpose is made clear when his examinations are added together with the Apache narratives. What results is a clear picture of what language and landscape mean to the Western Apaches, the functional versatility of place-names, and the importance of being aware of one's sense of place.
Places and Stories.......2004-01-26
Basso's writing is extraordinary. This great book consists of engaging articles that merge linguistics with cultural anthropology in an approach called the "ethnography of speaking." Placing this jargon aside, the approach is to demonstrate how Apaches use names, stories, and other ways of speaking to create and maintain their culture. Basso's work provides deep insight into Apache life, and it also serves as a model for ways to understand how language plays an important role in everyday life.
Amazon.com
"The language of landscape," writes ecologist Anne Whiston Spirn, "is our native language." She elaborates: humans lived in natural landscapes well before they knew how to build houses; knew how to read the movements of clouds and birds well before they developed grammars and symbols. Anyone with a keen sensibility can recover that language, she suggests: "A person literate in landscape sees significance where an illiterate person notes nothing. Past and future fires, floods, landslides, welcome or warning are visible to those who can read them in tree and slope, boundary and gate." Spirn goes on to discuss human interactions with the landscape, taking as cases in point such matters as the dolmens of prehistoric Europe, environmentally friendly houses in Denmark and Australia, fountains in Paris, and tree-lined city streets in Philadelphia. Along the way she cites scholars, architects, and artists, learning lessons in how to read place and built form from the likes of Christopher Alexander, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Rachel Carson. She closes with an appeal to landscape architects, builders, and designers to study the natural details of place more closely before they set about changing it: "In landscapes ... the key is to establish a framework that provides overall structure--a structure not arbitrary but congruent with the deep context of a place, to define a vocabulary of forms that expresses the natural and cultural processes of the place." --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
This eloquent and powerful book combines poetry and pragmatism to teach the language of landscape and thereby to avoid making profound aesthetic and environmental mistakes in landscape design. Using examples that range across thousands of years and five continents, Anne Spirn examines urban, rural, and natural landscapes and calls for change in the way we shape and respond to them.
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Describing Greece: Landscape and Literature in the Periegesis of Pausanias (Greek Culture in the Roman World)
William Hutton
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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Book Description
William Hutton provides the first exhaustive literary study of the Periegesis Hellados, the most important example of non-fictional travel literature in ancient Greek, to appear in nearly one hundred years. He examines Pausanias' arrangement and expression of his material and evaluates his authorial choices in light of the contemporary literary currents of the day and the cultural milieu of the Roman empire in the time of Hadrian and the Antonines. The descriptions offered in the Periegesis Hellados are also examined in the context of the archaeological evidence available for the places Pausanias visited.
Book Description
"Spanish Phrases For Landscaping Professionals" is a collection of user-friendly words and phrases to help English speaking Managers and Crew leaders communicate with their Hispanic employees. It covers hiring and training, safety, equipment use and maintenance, demolition, prep., installation, light masonry, grounds maintenance...etc. There is also a section for dealing with injuries. This book is NOT a textbook, but rather a "point and shoot" phrase book for Landscapers who need to say it NOW, and who have not found time to learn Spanish while working 60 hour weeks.
Customer Reviews:
Get this book!.......2007-08-12
Great book!
It's separated into different chapters based on different kinds of landscaping work (papaerwork, masonry, laying sod), and provides complete sentences, with pronunciation guide and English translation, that you can turn to and use immediately. It also has a very useful vocabulary list in the back. It won't take the place of a series of night classes at the local technical college, but it will get you through the work week.
If you already speak a little spanish, this is a 5 star book.
Downside? There are some typos (misplaced or missing accent marks, wrong gender for noun) that will make the some-spanish speakers a little crazy, and make the non-spanish speakers look like fools to their hispanic workers.
Still, I take this book to work with me every day.
Great first step.......2007-05-14
It is apparent as I reference this manual that the direct limitation is in how limited the phrases are as it applies to usage in settings other than the landscape industry. Granted, there are other useful phrases that have enabled me to communicate better than I have prior to owning this manual. However, the gap present, and, by no fault of the authors, is one that does not present langauge that allows me to effectively direct in the nursery/greenhouse environment. Regardless, Holben & Arbini are to be commended for taking that all too important first step in assisting those of us deficent in the language arts. I'm pleased with the purchase. It supports me greatly in it's own way.
Excellent resource.......2001-07-20
I've been in the landscaping business in Colorado for twelve years, and I wish I'd had this book before now. We have many Spanish speaking workers in Colorado, and this book comes in handy every day. It has especially helped facilitate the process of hiring and training new employees. The phonetics and the layout are easy to understand and read. I am finally able to communicate more effectively with my workforce. This book has proved to be an invaluable resource.
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Language For Those Who Have Nothing - Mikhail Bakhtin and the Landscape of Psychiatry (Cognition and Language: A Series in Psycholinguistics) (Cognition and Language: A Series in Psycholinguistics)
Peter Good
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 0306465027 |
Book Description
The aim of
Language for those who have Nothing is to
think psychiatry through the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin. Using the concepts of Dialogism and Polyphony, the Carnival and the Chronotope, a novel means of navigating the clinical landscape is developed.
Bakhtin offers language as a social phenomenon and one that is fully embodied. Utterances are shown to be alive and enfleshed and their meanings realised in the context of given social dimensions. The organisation of this book corresponds with carnival practices of taking the high down to the low before replenishing its meaning anew. Thus early discussions of official language and the chronotope become exposed to descending levels of analysis and emphasis.
Patients and practitioners are shown to occupy an entirely different spatio-temporal topography. These chronotopes have powerful borders and it is necessary to use the Carnival powers of cunning and deception in order to enter and to leave them. The book provides an overview of practitioners who have attempted such transgression and the author records his own unnerving experience as a pseudopatient. By exploring the context of psychiatry's unofficial voices: its terminology, jokes, parodies, and everyday narratives, the clinical landscape is shown to rely heavily on unofficial dialogues in order to safeguard an official identity.
Book Description
The Language of Flowers: Symbols and Myths Marina Heilmeyer
This revised flexi-cover edition of a popular gift book of Renaissance and Baroque floral paintings features numerous full-color illustrations and informative commentary.
Arranged alphabetically, the flowers depicted in this book by artists such as Brueghel and William Morris display a full array of emotions and ideals, declarations of love, gestures of gratitude, and expressions of sympathy. Each full-color, full-page illustration is accompanied by a descriptive text explaining the flower's symbolism, mythological importance, and meaning in the present day. From Hippocrates' discovery of the healing powers of the iris to the daffodil's connection with Christ's resurrection, this captivating collection of botanical art, enhanced by Marina Heilmeyer's insightful commentary, reminds us of the power and eloquence of nature's most exquisite gifts.
Marina Heilmeyer is a botanist and art historian at the Botanical Museum in Berlin. Her botanical commentary is featured in the highly acclaimed Maria Sibylla Merian: New Book of Flowers (Prestel).
Customer Reviews:
BOOK IS TOO TINY!.......2006-03-17
THIS Book is the size of a playing card and there is so little information in it PASS IT BY! 60 Little pages with a few sentences on each flower. The full color pictures just do not make up for what I thought would be Good reading. Give it away as a door prize.
I Never Got this Book (Sigh!).......2006-02-25
I was wondering why you have asked me to review this particular book, since you sent me notice that you had to cancel this order?
At first you said it was cancelled because I did not respond to say that a delay was OK. I explained to you what had occured.
Then, you said you had to cancel it because the book was out of print.
I am not at all upset with you--you continue to provide such considerate customer service! But, I guess I was really hoping that this book had turned up somehow, and that you had or would be sending it to me! Oh please! Oh please!
I would appreciate hearing from you about this. Thank you, Peggy Wiseman
Excellent Photos!.......2004-01-04
As an artist I am always in search of books that are not only interesting to read, but primarily filled with great photographs of works. This book is filled with wonderful original works...all in color. I would also say that "don't judge a book by it's cover" applies to this one because it not only contains floral "plates" like the one on the cover, but also stunning trompe l'oeil still lifes with a floral theme. This is a wonderful little book!!
The Meanings Attributed to Flowers Beautifully Displayed!.......2001-05-15
Anyone who has read the Bible or romantic poetry knows that flowers are often used as symbols. What may not have occurred to you is that the person you receive flowers from or give flowers to may read a message into the selections in the arrangement. If you are like me, you will never again select flowers as gifts solely for their aesthetic qualities. The book's strength is an outstanding choice of paintings used to illustrate the flowers discussed as well as their symbolism. You will be pleased to find the references for these paintings in the book so you can explore the works separately from the book.
Ms. Heilmeyer is both a botanist and an art historian in Berlin, which makes her eminently qualified to explore this subject. Her review of the history of flower symbolism begins in ancient Egypt and moves forward in time through Greece, Rome, and Christian sources across Western Europe. Her key point is that "Throughout the ages flowers have played an important role in expressing feelings, or when joyful or sad news had to be delivered."
The book is organized so that you get one page of essay facing one page of art illustration. The essay page will often have some small botanical illustrations on it. In total, you will find 156 color illustrations, almost all of which are wonderful! I was especially impressed that Ms. Heilmeyer was able to find botanical photographs that so aptly captured the symbolic elements of the flowers. On the top right of the page with the essay, the symbolic meanings are summarized to make it easier to use the book as a reference when assembling a message through an arrangement.
I was struck that many flowers symbolize different things totally in the religious versus the lay context. The potential for mixed messages is strong in those cases.
Here are a few flowers and some of their symbolic meanings to give you a flavor of what you will learn in the book:
Columbine (Aquilegia) -- wisdom and strength, piety and fear; a symbol of salvation, the triumph of life over death; an aphrodisiac;
Thistle -- Scotland's national emblem; a symbol of hard work, suffering and Christ's deliverance; dispels melancholy;
Strawberry -- First fruit of the year; a symbol of purity and sensuality, fertility and abandance, humility and modesty;
Camellia -- A symbol of the transience of life;
Crocus -- Symbol of the Resurrection and heavenly bliss;
Stock -- Symbol of happy life and contented existence;
Lily -- Purity;
Lily of the Valley -- A symbol of the Virgin Mary;
Daisy -- The love flower;
Daffodil -- The promise of eternal life;
Carnation -- Bravery, love, and friendship; symbol of Mother's Day;
Peony -- An arden love of God;
Rose -- Love and joy; and
Pansy -- Sign of the Holy Trinity; symbolizes loyalty.
The obvious application of this book is to make up bouquets that are meaningfully beautiful. I hope you will use it that way to bring you closer to those you love.
After you have finished enjoying this book and making many wonderful arrangements that you would not have considered before, I suggest that you also think about other natural items that have symbolic meanings and employ them as well to expand your visual use of language.
Book Description
Writing the Landscape of Your Mind: Natalie Goldberg's Minnesota Workshop
Our second Goldberg tape includes groundbreaking advice on structure, not addressed in Bones or Wild Mind, and she reads the introduction to her 1993 book Long Quiet Highway. The workshop includes new writing exercises and support for writers. "You create the universe," she says.
2 70 Minute Tapes
Customer Reviews:
Looooooove Goldberg!.......2002-08-09
I missed Natalie Goldberg's workshop in Minneapolis...But I found(and was quite excited about it!) her workshop on audio.
In the comfort of my home, I had my own personal Natalie Goldberg writing workshop. It was wonderful!
Natalie talks about writing (Of course) And "Writing Practice"
"Just trust yourself," she says. "You don't have anyone else to trust.
Write. Write. Write."
And do not stop until the timer goes off. Do not worry about grammar, misspelled words, nothing.
Just go."
Think about your favorite meal....
Now go! The buzzer goes off and you write for 10 minutes (No Stopping) that is the rule. You write until the buzzer tells you it's time to stop.
Then Natalie asks the students who would like to read their work. A few brave people did. First thoughts and all! Some crap. Some brilliant stuff.
I read my own work in the company of me!
Natalie is always saying that "FIRST THOUGHTS" are the truest thoughts...and this is excellent advice to all writers. I know if I think too much, or wonder who I will offend, I lose the original beauty of the words.
If you cannot make Natalie's workshop, I would suggest buying her audio cassettes. This is the next best thing! It's like having your own personal trainer.
But this trainer is for the mind...how to use it...how to train it...how to discipline it.
Now get off your butt and WRITE!
(First thoughts only, please.)
Book Description
This lavishly illustrated book on one of Japan's preeminent painters focuses on the relationship between topography and the language of visual symbols a painter manipulates, or must invent, to suggest specific places.
Customer Reviews:
Ike Taiga - a central figure in the history of Japanese art.......2001-01-09
Ms Takeuchi has presented an excellent appraisal of the life and work of Taiga. After a detailed biographical section, the artist is considered in relation to his contemporaries and to developing theories about the relationship between landscape and pictorial representation. Particular attention is paid to the theories of Gyokushu, who assigned Taiga a central position in the new Nanga movement in Japanese art. Finally, the meanings of the concept "shinkeizu", or "true-view", as applied to Taiga's work, are helpfully clarified.
Taiga is shown to occupy a pivotal position, reinterpreting Chinese traditions of landscape painting to give new impetus to topographical art during the Tokugawa period. His genius is shown to reside in his simultaneous innovation, and respect for tradition.
This book is generously illustrated in colour and monochrome, and benefits from some very helpful appendices, including a section on the personal seals used by Taiga on his pictures.
Book Description
In 1977 David Foster took to the woods of New England to build a cabin with his own hands. Along with a few tools he brought a copy of the journals of Henry David Thoreau. Foster was struck by how different the forested landscape around him was from the one Thoreau described more than a century earlier. The sights and sounds that Thoreau experienced on his daily walks through nineteenth-century Concord were those of rolling farmland, small woodlands, and farmers endlessly working the land. As Foster explored the New England landscape, he discovered ancient ruins of cellar holes, stone walls, and abandoned cartways--all remnants of this earlier land now largely covered by forest. How had Thoreau's open countryside, shaped by ax and plough, divided by fences and laneways, become a forested landscape?
Part ecological and historical puzzle, this book brings a vanished countryside to life in all its dimensions, human and natural, offering a rich record of human imprint upon the land. Extensive excerpts from the journals show us, through the vividly recorded details of daily life, a Thoreau intimately acquainted with the ways in which he and his neighbors were changing and remaking the New England landscape. Foster adds the perspective of a modern forest ecologist and landscape historian, using the journals to trace themes of historical and social change.
Thoreau's journals evoke not a wilderness retreat but the emotions and natural history that come from an old and humanized landscape. It is with a new understanding of the human role in shaping that landscape, Foster argues, that we can best prepare ourselves to appreciate and conserve it today.
From the journal:
"I have collected and split up now quite a pile of driftwood--rails and riders and stems and stumps of trees--perhaps half or three quarters of a tree...Each stick I deal with has a history, and I read it as I am handling it, and, last of all, I remember my adventures in getting it, while it is burning in the winter evening. That is the most interesting part of its history. It has made part of a fence or a bridge, perchance, or has been rooted out of a clearing and bears the marks of fire on it...Thus one half of the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal quantity of the wood which I buy."
--October 20, 1855
Customer Reviews:
Natural New England: then, now, & all points in-between.......2004-12-04
Henry David Thoreau was intrigued by the natural world around Concord, Massachusetts, and a few other favorite New England sites. And whenever he was interested in something or wanted to mull over something, he jotted his findings and his musings in his journals. David Foster has analyzed the journal entries and has compared all the descriptions of Thoreau's New England landscape of the 19th century with our present-day environment. The result is a marvelous insight into the complex intertwinings of natural succession and human land use over several centuries.
At first glance, you might think this book is just another mere compilation of quotes from Thoreau's journals. Nothing could be further from the truth! The chapters address a variety of aspects of the landscape. Each chapter begins with Foster's original explanation of the topic, and he backs up his interpretations with Thoreau's dated journal entries. We are fortunate to have these daily observations and to be able to see the pond of "Walden" fame as a microcosm of the 19th-century New England landscape. For while Thoreau wrote that he "went to the woods," the place he went to was a far cry from what we would now typically call "wooded." Foster says, "It is ironic to recognize today, when a high value is placed on nature, wilderness, and old-growth landscape, that America's premier nature writer and propounder of conservation and wilderness values lived at a time when the New England landscape was arguably the most tamed and most dominated by human activity in its entire history." (p. 222)
And while the writings of Thoreau are generally approached through American literature classes, we've been remiss in not giving more credence to the *science* in his observations. He had ideas about sustainability that were unusual and ahead of his time, and we are gradually coming to realize that his notes make perfect sense today. "More than half a century after Thoreau laid out the story of succession in painstaking detail in his journals, his lessons had to be relearned by the forest ecologists at Harvard." (p. 226) David Foster has the benefit of being able to draw on both knowledge bases: Thoreau's and his own, and he can easily compare the two in this volume. Indeed, this is exactly the kind of book that Thoreau would have read and would have been captivated by, for he was forming his own theories about the trends he found in Nature.
In this volume, Foster puts a new spin on the concept of conservation, preservation, and exactly what is "native" or "a natural state." Every inch of our world has been affected by some sort of human activity. "We are caught in a cultural dilemma in which we seek to maintain what we know and what is becoming rare even though it is largely the consequence of intense human activity." (p. 225)
The text is accompanied by the beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations of Abigail Rorer, who has done similiar work for other "Thoreau books." Foster's additional bibliographic essay provides documentation and the processes he went through to conduct his research. A list of sources plus a 10-page bibliography cap off this work.
While this is an easy enough book to read, Foster's narrations and conclusions take time to digest. They must be savored and absorbed. The reader needs time to stop and think about what he/she's just read. So while this is a worthwhile read, it isn't necessarily a quick one. Recommended for Thoreauvians (of course!), and should also be mandatory study for land managers throughout New England, the Northeast, and in other North American regions. Even lifelong New England residents will learn something new here.
Terrific book, very well written.......1999-05-21
A must read for people interested in the environment and how to interpret their surroundings. Beautifully written, thoughtful and intelligent. One of the best books I've read.
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