Rural Life Books - Page 6

It's Not the End of the Earth, but You Can See It from Here

Roger Welsch

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

CUDOS from a once Small Town Boy 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

In "It's Not the End of the Earth,..", Roger Welsch does an excellent job bringing out the humor of small town life by simply telling stories about his friends in Centralia, NE. He has a witty way of giving value to each of the members of this rural community bringing to light the peculiar habits and expressions that make them all unique, interesting, and memorable. I applaud Prof. Welsch's folkloric expose' of the kinds of everyday things that I used to laugh about with my dad - some of my favorite things.

Editorial Review:

Roger Welsch did what many Americans only dream of doing. While still in his professional prime, the folklorist and humorist quit a tenured professorship and headed toward the hinterland. Resettled in the open heart of Nebraska with his wife, Welsch proceeded to learn how to live. It’s Not the End of the Earth, but You Can See It from Here is, in his own words, "a celebration" of his "rural education." These twenty-eight tales of the Great Plains convey in familiar Welschian style "the importance, charm, beauty, and value of the typical." They describe the wisdom that Welsch’s new-found teachers share with him. From everyday country people, he learns the fine arts of relaxing, using his noggin, trusting his instincts, and laughing a lot more, while Omaha Indian friends teach him the most profound lessons of all.

Best Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer

Noel Perrin

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1963, Noel Perrin, a 35-year-old professor of English at Dartmouth College, bought an 85-acre farm in Thetford Center, Vermont. For the next forty years he spent half his time teaching, half writing, and half farming. "That this adds up to three halves I am all too aware," he said, sounding a characteristic, self-deprecating note of bittersweet amusement at the chalk on his coat, the sweat on his brow, and the mud (and worse) on his boots.

"I love this farm," he wrote shortly before his death in 2004, "every acre of it. The maples, the apple trees, the cattle, the wild turkeys. I love the brick farmhouse, which I believe to be about 190 years old ... and the two barns. I love the view from the kitchen window ... and the grander view to be had if you climb Bill Hill, the farm's in-house mini-mountain. The thing that delights me most, though, is that the farm really is a farm. It produces a little food every year, and most years a little fuel as well." It also produced four volumes of essays, beginning with the best-selling First Person Rural (1978). Some of Perrin's pieces are practical (how to build a stone wall), others philosophical (why to build a stone wall). One pretends to be about amateur sugar making, but it is really a metaphor for reality and illusion. Another pretends to be about the country as a retreat, but is really about the country as a place to meet the world head-on. One is a dangerous character sketch of a sow dangerous, because as Roy Blount said after reading it, "It almost made me decide to go ahead and get pigs."

In short, these essays are as good as the literature of farming gets. Best Person Rural is a harvest feast, bringing together twenty of Perrin's best-loved pieces and five previously uncollected items, including his moving "Farewell to a Thetford Farm."

Animal Happiness: A Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions

Vicki Hearne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Our Happiness 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I just re-read this book after many years and it holds up. This book gives one side of an important debate that is going on, a side that isn't heard from as often as it should be.

People who work with domestic animals have a different language to discuss and a different philosophy about what they are doing than people who talk about them in the fields of philosophy and the behavioral sciences.

Vicki Hearne was a member of both communities. In this book, she articulates the views of those who work with animals and makes their case. She does so strongly and beautifully and she does not kowtow to the authority of academia.

It is probably very important to read Adam's Task, by the same author, to fully appreciate this book. I am re-reading it at the moment and will review it soon.

Editorial Review:

A New York Times Notable Book of 1994!  Highly respected author, philosopher, and animal trainer Vicki Hearne offers a treasure trove of animal anecdotes, all written in her unique and poetic style. Through entertaining stories about cats, horses, an ornamental carp, a scorpion, and tortoises, Hearne focuses on how each of these various creatures experiences happiness in its own special way. She takes issue with Ludwig Wittgenstein on lions and language, discusses the naming of pets, and considers the process of mourning a loved dog’s death.

Big Thicket Legacy (Temple Big Thicket Series, 2)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A very special and experienced wisdom 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Collaboratively compiled and co-edited by lifelong naturalists Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller, Big Thicket Legacy is a compendium of engaging and informative anecdotes about life and living in the Big Thicket country, which is a nearly impassable area of Texas territory that only a few pioneers dared to brave. In those days, only the heartiest of individuals and families could call a place within the heart of the Big Thicket home; their tales have become a part of Texas folklore, and in Big Thicket Legacy are preserved to available to the general reading public, thereby recounting a very special experienced wisdom for new generations of Texans.

Editorial Review:

In Big Thicket Legacy, Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller present the stories of people living in the Big Thicket of southeast Texas. Many of the storytellers were close to one hundred years old when interviewed, with some being the great-grandchildren of the first settlers. Here are tales about robbing a bee tree, hunting wild boar, plowing all day and dancing all night, wading five miles to church through a cypress brake, and making soap using hickory ashes.

Voices of the Apalachicola (Florida History and Culture)

FAITH EIDSE

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Just like listening to old folks tell stories 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Voices is a rich, moving account of the people who have lived in and around the apalachicola river their whole lives - and how that river is dying. The chapters deal with fishing, logging, damming, sharecropping, etc., and are broken up into sections, usually 6 to 10 pages in length, with each section focusing on the story of a different person. These oral histories are just that - oral histories. The writing is verbatim - sometimes the people trail off, or don't quite make sense, or don't entirely finish telling you about a subject, but that is what makes the book so great - it's real. Just like listening to your grandparents tell a story; you may not get all the details, but what does come through is great. There are a variety of sources from Native Americans to catfish trappers to engineers to steamboat captains to loggers - but all their stories lead up to one message, the river is drying up, and the flora and fauna are dying, a result of Atlanta's need for water, developers, and poor choices made by the government and the corps of engineers. But its not a depressing book, as there are many heartfelt stories of humor, wit and the tenacity of the human spirit. These stories and this book are great!

Editorial Review:

One of the main water resources for Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, the Apalachicola River begins where the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers meet at Lake Seminole and flow unimpeded for 106 miles, through the red hills and floodplains of the Florida panhandle into the Gulf of Mexico.



Voices of the Apalachicola is a collection of oral histories from more than thirty individuals who have lived out their entire lives in this region, including the last steamboat pilot on the river system, sharecroppers who escaped servitude, turpentine workers in Tate's Hell, sawyers of "old-as-Christ" cypress, beekeepers working the last large tupelo stand, and a Creek chief descended from a 200-year unbroken line of chiefs.



 

The Prophet of Dry Hill: Lessons From a Life in Nature

David Gessner

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

David Gessner had always known of John Hay. A nature writing legend, Hay was a hero to the younger writer. But it wasn't until Gessner returned to his childhood home on Cape Cod that he befriended the older man. At first, Gessner thought he might write Hay's biography. But that idea gradually changed as the two talked and walked through the fifty acres surrounding Hay's house on Dry Hill. The book that resulted is a dramatic record of what the younger man learned from his elder.

The Prophet of Dry Hill is the compelling story of two men and the year they spent together. But more than a book about friendship, it's a lyrical primer on the importance of living a life connected to the wild. John Hay has lived deeply on one piece of land for sixty years. As a consequence, he has much to tell Gessner—and us—about the importance of creating a strong relationship with the land we live on. His words speak to our forgotten need for space and for reaching beyond ourselves to the world outside. Seeing is the great discipline that nature teaches, Hay proclaims. Nature, not psychology, is the path to our true selves.

In our split-second world, a life like John Hay's—rooted, connected to nature—provides a radical counterpoint to our technology-filled indoor existences. Gessner learned much from this man on the hill. We too will be challenged and changed.

Shark: Stories of Life and Death from the World's Most Dangerous Waters (Adrenaline)

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A good and varied selection 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Written by those who fear them, those who study them and those who hunt them - May lets you see the shark from many perspectives. It would have been easy to just compile as many accounts of gristly attacks as possible, but May had taken a higher road. Rodney Fox explains how an attack victim forces himself back into the surf, the model for Jaws' shark-hunter Quint tells how he got into the business. The book is not just about sharks, but about the people who try to share their world. And of course, just to make sure you stay on the beach this summer, there are some dramatic accounts of attacks - not all of which were survivable. The selections are well-chosen and pretty much closed-ended so you don't feel cheated, although the excerpt of Caldwell's solo Pacific crossing may have you searching for the rest of his story. This is light and interesting reading - fast paced - perfect for summer.

Editorial Review:

Shark picks up where previous Adrenaline titles such as Rough Water and Deep Blue left off, with a collection focusing on man's terrifying interactions with one of the planet's most frightening beasts—an animal that arouses our most primal fears—fears that were recently brought to the surface by an outbreak of fatal attacks on this country's beaches. From novelists to sailors to oceanographers to divers, man's encounters with sharks have produced a diverse body of gripping, often inspired writing by great names in adventure literature. Along with 16 black-and-white photos, selections feature a wide range of work with an emphasis on thrills and chills, including Peter Matthiessen on the great white shark, Edward Marriott on hunting man-eaters off Nicaragua, Richard Fernicola's account of the 1916 shark attacks that inspired Peter Benchley's Jaws, and Jacques Cousteau's studies of the creatures.

First Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer

Noel Perrin

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Imagine a large family gathering. There are a couple of cousins who have never met before, a teacher from New York and a lifetime Vermonter. Over yonder are four bearded brothers talking to Uncle Philip, who sells life insurance. Sitting in the corner is Aunt Sarah who, raises hens.

This book is a bit like such a gathering. The essays in it, all concerned with countryish things, range from intensely practical to mildly literary. Transplanted from New York fifteen years ago and now a real life Vermont farmer, Noel Perrin candidly admits to hilarious early mistakes ('In Search of the Perfect Fence Post') while presenting down-to-earth advice on such rural necessities as 'Sugaring on $15 a Year,' 'Raising Sheep,' and 'Making Butter in the Kitchen.'

But as everyone who has read his essay in The New Yorker, Country Journal, and Vermont Life will confirm, not everything Perrin writes is strictly about the exigencies of country life. While one essay seems to discuss the use of wooden sap buckets, it really addresses the nature of illusion and reality as they co-exist in rural places. Another forewarns those who consider the country of idyllic retreat. This is a delightful book, and twelve marvelous vignettes by Stephen Harvard accompany the text.

Teaching the Trees: Lessons from the Forest

Joan Maloof

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Editorial Review:

In this collection of natural-history essays, biologist Joan Maloof embarks on a series of lively, fact-filled expeditions into forests of the eastern United States. Through Maloof's engaging, conversational style, each essay offers a lesson in stewardship as it explores the interwoven connections between a tree species and the animals and insects whose lives depend on it--and who, in turn, work to ensure the tree's survival.

Never really at home in a laboratory, Maloof took to the woods early in her career. Her enthusiasm for firsthand observation in the wild spills over into her writing, whether the subject is the composition of forest air, the eagle's preference for nesting in loblolly pines, the growth rings of the bald cypress, or the gray squirrel's fondness for weevil-infested acorns. With a storyteller's instinct for intriguing particulars, Maloof expands our notions about what a tree "is" through her many asides--about the six species of leafhoppers who eat only sycamore leaves or the midges who live inside holly berries and somehow prevent them from turning red.

As a scientist, Maloof accepts that trees have a spiritual dimension that cannot be quantified. As an unrepentant tree hugger, she finds support in the scientific case for biodiversity. As an activist, she can't help but wonder how much time is left for our forests.

Through Animals' Eyes, Again: Stories of Wildlife Rescue

Lynn Marie Cuny

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Editorial Review:

From the author of Through Animals’ Eyes come more true stories from the rare perspective of someone who not only cares for the animals she treats, but also has never wanted nor tried to tame or change them. Lynn Cuny founded Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation (WRR) in 1977 in her backyard in San Antonio. It has since grown to 187 acres and now rescues more than 7,000 animals annually and maintains an emergency hotline 365 days a year. Native animals are released back into the wild, and those non-native or severely injured animals that cannot be released become permanent Sanctuary residents. Through her stories, Lynn hopes to dispel the belief that animals do not reason, have emotions, or show compassion for each other.

Lynn’s stories cover the humorous and the tragic, the surprising and the inevitable. The animals she describes range from the orphaned baby Rhesus monkey who found a new mother in an old monkey rescued from a lab, to the brave red-tailed hawk who was illegally shot, but healed to soar again. The stories will touch your heart and help you see "through animals’ eyes."