Book Description
"There's always a point in the season when you're faced with a challenge
and you see what you're capable of. And you grow up."
-- J.T. Curtis, head coach, John Curtis Christian School Patriots
On Saturday, August 27, 2005, the John Curtis Patriots met for a
grueling practice in the late summer New Orleans sun, the air a visible
fog of humidity. They had pulled off a 19-0 shutout in their pre-season
game the night before, but it was a game full of dumb mistakes. Head
coach J.T. Curtis was determined to drill those mistakes out of them
before their highly anticipated next game, which sportswriters had
dubbed "the Battle of the Bayou" against a big team coming in all the
way from Utah. As fate played out, that afternoon was the last time the
Patriots would see one another for weeks; some teammates they'd never
see again. Hurricane Katrina was about to tear their lives apart.
The Patriots are a most unlikely football dynasty. There is a small,
nondescript, family-run school, the buildings constructed by hand by the
school's founding patriarch, John Curtis Sr. In this era of high school
football as big business with 20,000 seat stadiums, John Curtis has no
stadium of its own. The team plays an old-school offense, and Coach
Curtis insists on a no-cut policy, giving every kid who wants to play a
chance. As of 2005, they'd won nineteen state championships in Curtis's
thirty-five years of coaching, making him the second most winning high
school coach ever. Curtis has honed to a fine art the skill of teaching
players how to transcend their natural talents. No screamer, he strives
to teach kids about playing with purpose, the power of respect, dignity,
poise, patience, trust in teamwork, and the payoff of perseverance,
showing them how to be winners not only on the gridiron, but in life,
and making boys into men. Hurricane Katrina would put those lessons to
the test of a lifetime.
Hurricane Season is the story of a great coach, his team, his family,
and their school -- and a remarkable fight back from shocking tragedy. It
is a story of football and faith, and of the transformative power of a
team that rises above adversity, and above its own abilities, to come
together again and prove what they're made of. It is the gripping story
of how, as one player put it, "football became my place of peace."
Customer Reviews:
THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF THE STORY.......2007-10-01
Hurricane season is an excellent complement to Douglas Brinkley's " The Great Deluge." While Brinkley provides an excellent analytical and scholarly account of Hurricane Katrina that should set the standard for many years; Hurricane Season captures the powerful emotional dimensions. Though grounded in the story of a high school football team, it transcends normal sportswriting by speaking to the bigger panorama of life, suffering, loss, and inspiring tales of recovery and fortitude.
With so many aspirations and dreams hanging in the balance, the J.T. Curtis School and football team regroup after enduring catastrophe and devastation and become a beacon of hope and solace for many of the victims.
Replete with an abundance of anecdotes and personal accounts, Thompson weaves their stories into a gripping narrative that will find appeal among readers of all genres. This is a stirring and fast paced treatment of those perilous days that is both wrenching and redeeming.
A Season to Remember!.......2007-08-30
Lest we forgot the terrible tragedy that hurricane Katrina wrought, the two years of its aftermath magnifies still, the will to prevail. This is evident as thousands attempt to put their lives back together. Against all odds despite the hand of fate dealing a devastating blow to status quo, a group of courageous kids purposed not to allow angst to color the proverbial agony of defeat. Their story is typically told in author Neal Thompson's poignant book, HURRICANE SEASON. What a remarkable tale told amid the idea of overcoming the sheer force of a natural disaster. The author captures a truly extraordinary picture of boys and men doing what needs to be done with a sense of purpose that give new meaning to hope. This is the story of coach J.T. Curtis and a team that wouldn't quit when most would have simply thrown in the towel. John Curtis Christian School -- the Patriots, were a team of destiny that won you over once you read how they managed to allow rays of hope to illuminate sunshine on cloudy days eradicating the pervasive feeling of sadness...Let me tell you how they did it!
They did it with moxie, determination and an unbelievable test of faith. The book is a story that tugs at your heart and compels you to want to read it hoping for an ending that is akin to a `happily ever after' effect. Neal Thompson wrote with a clear mission to bring clarity to a group of kids that had reason to play with reckless abandon. The book is based on a majority of interviews conducted with Coach J.T., faculty members, students of John Curtis, many of the 2005 school year Patriots and their families, et al. The amazing thing about the book, the storm, and aftermath is the fact that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita gave us a chance to witness their fury on television with countless newspaper stories, and survivor accounts in magazines and online blogs...but the sheer affect it had on the people who suffered, the places they destroyed, and the things that will forever be associated with them, nothing can top this outstanding book for significant meaning in a reflective way.
The backdrop has a legendary football coach, albeit winning and charismatic looking at a rebuilding year in 2005. Despite losing his star quarterback to a rival school with a better chance at winning and the philosophy of team discipline, nothing could stop his drive for perfection - accept a lady on a mission! Katrina struck with impunity forcing players to abandon the city along with the multitude that called New Orleans home. However, John Curtis School survived with limited damage, allowing it to become one of the first schools to reopen. The book does a credible job of telling in graphic detail how Coach Curtis struggled to find games to resume the new season. His players battered and mentally beaten, were amazingly anxious to try to return to a sense of normality, and a ring of hope for their futures. All of this was based on a coaches' determination to spur his team to greater heights restoring self-esteem. I loved this book, especially the fact that it gives a good account of a proud school with an intrinsic view at Hurricane Katrina and how it affected the community-at-large. The author gave you a sense of concern for the families, how the government fumbled, and in the end, how a team scored the winning touchdown!
Sports fan or not, I have no doubt that Neal Thompson told a story worth reading, replete with facts, figures, and detail that takes nothing away from its 308 pages. This is a `feel good' story where it merits a chance for all readers to experience chaos written in a way to dispel notions of despair, yet give credence to overcoming odds for the thrill of victory. Thank you Neal Thompson for this book. I have no problems rating it 5 stars out of 5, and will encourage others to buy it where books are sold.
Very good book.......2007-08-23
If you enjoyed "Friday Night Lights" you will like this book, but it is about much more than just football. You can't imagine what these kids went through during and after Katrina, but this book tells the story very well. These kids came back home with their families to rebuild and in the process showed dedication to their city and school. This is easily one of the best stories to come out of Katrina. I hope this book can reach a wider audience, like FNL, because this is easily the best football/life books to come out since FNL hit the shelves.
If you have any interest at all in high school football, Katrina, or New Orleans then you will not be disappointed.
Reviewed by Barb Radmore.......2007-08-01
The effects of Hurricane Katrina have been reported over and over, on TV, in newspapers, magazines and blogs. With modern technology many of us got to watch it live, bearing down in all its terror, from the comfort of our safe, intact homes. It would seem that we knew all there was to know, knew the effects of the storm on people, places and things. But none of the coverage, none of the follow up reports on the storm and its aftermath can top the book Hurricane Season for sheer impact, both on knowledge and emotions.
Hurricane Season is the story of one football team in the Parish of New Orleans. The team, The Patriots, is from a private Christian school that prides itself on its diverse student population, its core Christian values and its football team. Coach JT Curtis has one of the best win records in the country. His players have gone on to play for top college teams, a few are even playing for the NFL. In 2005 he was looking at a rebuilding year. The quarterback they expected to lead the team has left to join a rival school, one that will allow him more chances to gain the valuable stats that colleges seek. Coach Curtis believes in team effort, not individual star making. His team, due to his no cut policy, numbers over 100 each year. In a school of only 650 students, that is a very large percentage of the student population. His players train all summer, work to stay in shape, to be physically and mentally prepared for the fall football season. Coach believes in practice too- not the common 2 practices a day of most schools but three a day, a relentless, high powered training plan. But after all the preparations the season is brought to a sudden halt by Katrina. For football coaches' wives everywhere, the scene where the town is evacuating and the coaches' spouses are calling, actually interrupting their usual after practice meeting to try to convince the men to come home and pack, will ring very true. For the coaches and players nothing, short of Hurricane Katrina, would interfere with football.
But Katrina does interfere, sending players fleeing to other parts of the country, taking away their homes, their parents' jobs and all stability. John Curtis School survives with limited damage, allowing it to become one of the first schools to reopen. The Curtis family, the extended family of the original school founder John Curtis, works to locate and convince as many students as possible to return to the area. Coach Curtis struggles to locate other teams willing and able to resume the football season. His players begin to return, exhausted, scared and confused but anxious to try to return to a sense of normality, a sense of hope for their futures, based on the foundation of the football team they love.
The book begins and ends with football. It will appeal to any football fan, player, coach or sports fanatic. But this book goes far beyond the field. It interweaves the story of the John Curtis School, its history and its football, with an insider's look at Katrina and its aftermath. Using the individual players of the team and the storm's effects on them and their families Thompson is able to broaden the scope of the book to include an in depth look at the handling of the storm by individuals, agencies and the government. The middle section of the book is a clearly written account of the plight of those that suffered the loss of everything, the impact on families, jobs and futures. It is a devastating chronicle of not only nature's worst but of mankind at its best and worst.
Hurricane Season is a journalistic view of one team, its players and the effects of the worst storm in American history. It is a tale of football, its impact on the youth who play America's favorite sport. It is a tale of one school and its efforts to create the best possible school that produces well rounded men and women. It is the tale of a government that is not able to handle the storm or its aftermath. But most of all, it is a tale of people- from the players who never give up, their families that survive the unthinkable and a school of parents, teachers and coaches that care.
Neal Thompson has written a book that will resonate will all readers. His ability to tell the facts, clearly and vividly, on all levels of his account is exceptional. He tells all his true tales with clarity of knowledge, facts and figures, data and details. But it is the emotion that comes through the portrayal of the various aspects that makes this book outstanding. It is nonfiction at its most effective; it pushes the reader into involvement, caring and action. It is impossible to read this book and not respond on some level- perhaps some extra understanding or support for local sports programs, a volunteer relief effort (it is still needed) or at the very least an awareness of the America around us.. It celebrates our resiliency as it mourns our failures. Thompson managed this extraordinary writing feat of non fiction with heart, soul and flesh, examining the entire body of one individual event in our modern history.
Reviewer's Personal Note:
I must say that I HATE football. I live in small rural town in New England that lives, breathes and idolizes our State Champion high school football team. I never quite understood it. This book certainly does explain it on many levels. If I loved this book as much as I did, any sports fan will really be impressed. But it should go way beyond sports fans for readers. I am rarely not able to put a book down (I would never do anything but read othewise) but this book had me glued to the end. I highly recommend it for all readers.
Book Description
With more than 600 miles of trails within just a few hours of New York City, the Catskills and the Hudson River Valley are a hiker's paradise, boasting varied and scenic terrain from Westchester County to Albany. This new guide from the experts at the Appalachian Mountain Club leads beginner and experienced hikers alike along sixty of the region's most spectacular trails, from short family nature walks to day-long hikes that reward with magnificent views. Each trip description includes a detailed map and a summary of the trip time, distance, and difficulty, plus an icon indicating whether the trail is also good for snowshoeing or cross-country. The guide includes appendices packed with snowshoe treks, rock climbing in the Gunks, and other opportunities for outdoor adventure in the region, making this guide an essential four-season reference for locals and visitors alike.
Special features include:
>Fifty day hikes for all ability levels, ranging from two to eight miles long
>Detailed and accurate trail descriptions
>Locator map and "At-A-Glance" highlights chart for easy trip comparison and planning
>Hiking and safety tips
>Detailed maps showing parking areas, trails, and natural highlights
>Nature Notes about prominent species, and unique natural features of each hike
>Photographs of plant and animal life reflecting each trip's hidden wonders
Customer Reviews:
The premier guide for anyone planning an excursion in New York's Catskills and Hudson Valley country!.......2006-08-09
There are more than 600 miles of hiking trails in the Catskill mountains and the Hudson Valley, locales that are within just a few hours of New York City. "AMC's Best Day Hikes In The Catskills & Hudson Valley" is a practical "day trip" guide to varied and scenic terrains that range from Westchester County to Albany, showcasing sixty of the most scenic and spectacular of these trails which suited for anything from short family nature walks to day-long hikes with magnificent views. Each individual trail trip includes a detailed map and a summary of the trip time, distance, and difficultly. An icon indicates whether the trail is also good for snowshoeing or cross-country skiing in the winter, making "AMC's Best Day Hikes In The Catskills & Hudson Valley" an all weather, all-season reference of value for both local residents and vacationing visitors. Enhanced with hiking and safety tips, advice for hiking with children, an 'At-a-Glance Trip Planner' for finding the best hikes suited to the reader's aspirations and limitations, "AMC's Best Day Hikes In The Catskills & Hudson Valley" is the premier guide for anyone planning an excursion in New York's Catskills and Hudson Valley country!
Book Description
Three miles downstream from Grayling, Michigan, is the Holy Water, a stretch of the Au Sable River that is some of the most storied trout fishing water in the country. One man, perhaps more than any other, has adopted this magical place as his own, nurturing, protecting, and sharing its secrets with generations of anglers over the years. His name is Rusty Gates.
In Seasons on the Au Sable, Rusty imparts his substantial knowledge of how to fly fish this blue-ribbon trout fishery. And he should know. The Gates Au Sable Lodge is nestled along the banks of the Holy Water, and his legendary fly shop is a cast away from the Main Branch. His book begins with the most important month of the year--April, the season opener! It follows the progression of insect hatches that occur in northern Michigan, many unique to the Au Sable. Along with Rusty's stories and personal reflections on the river, the book includes practical advice such as which flies to use, the best time of day to fish, and what impact weather may have on hatches and fish activity.
Customer Reviews:
The Rust Man Drops a Bomb on the Fly Fishing World.......2007-09-27
You may think you're an accomplished fly fisherman, but you don't know jack about the sport until you've read this new treatise by Rusty "F'in" Gates. From how to tie Dave's Hopper to how to skin the face of a scumbag who interferes with your cast, Rusty tells it like it is. He brings you all the raw secrets of fly fishing, something no author has had the balls to do before.
From the moment I set eyes on Bill "Duke" Sodeman's introduction, in which he relates a story about the time Rusty caught a trophy brookie and beat a drifter to death with it, I was transfixed. This book truly takes you into the seedy underbelly of the fly fishing world with a level of honesty and brutality that I simply was not prepared for. Every chapter took my breath away.
Sure, this book covers the basics, such as how to choose your equipment, how to make a variety of casts, and what to do in given environmental conditions, but plenty of books do that. Where this book shines is its presentation of fly fishing's all-night cocaine binges, orgies with teenage groupies, and shocking violence perpetrated against fish and man alike. If you are not a fly fisherman, this book will challenge your fortitude as it dares you to pick up a rod and venture into the wilderness alone. If you are a fisherman of any skill level, this book will give you the tools you need to survive on the bloodthirsty Holy Waters of the Au Sable river.
Pass this one by at your own peril.
A most relaxing read!!!.......2007-09-12
This is a book for all flyfishing lovers...Turn the TV and radio off, open the windows to hear the birds, bugs and wind and to smell the out-of-doors. Then settle into your favorite chair and savor every word of this refreshing book. You can hear the river and in a minute or two, you are there...on a mini-vacation. Rusty Gates succintly captures the mood and the mystery of the great North and in particular, the "Holy Water" of the famed AuSable River in Michigan. What a tribute to a grand river and what better author than Mr. Au Sable, himself. I am hoping for another book by Rusty in the future.
Wisdom from the guardian of the river!.......2007-05-25
This book is a glimpse at the year in the life of a man and a river. Rusty Gates, along with Anglers of the Au Sable[...], is the guardian angel of a river system that is the jewel of Northern Michigan. The book contains the week by week fishing logs and thoughts that any angler visiting this area would benefit greatly from reading. The book is written in a way that makes you feel like you're talking to Rusty in his shop on the banks of the Holy Waters. A must read for Northern Michigan Troutbumm's!
Book Description
In her first book, which won the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award, Jane Brox writes of going back to the farm where she grew up, to help her aging father and the troubled brother who works the land with him. She memorably captures the cadences of farm life and the people who sustain it, at a time when both are waning.
Customer Reviews:
a little book about a small farm written with unusual poetry and love.......2007-08-31
I am a city person, and the closest I have been to a small farm is buying apples in the autumn at a roadside stand. I have no idea how I chose to buy this book and Jane's two other ones, but I did buy it and fell in love with it. The poetry is deep; she tells the story of her aging father who in his eighties tries to keep his beloved farm going, her brother who has stayed to help but is angry and sometimes dysfunctional, her mother, and her own return after many years. These are wound around and blended with tales of seasons of growth -- of apples, berries, all sorts of corn and the customers who show up decade after decade to buy what they loved last year. It is truly a spiritual book, and gives this city girl a sense of the enduring earth and its gifts and the people who are closest to it.
Here and Nowhere Else.......2000-01-04
Here and Nowhere Else captures with its perfect language the timeless undulations of rural living. It is not so much like reading a book as it is like walking the land with someone who respects both the comfort and the pain it can give. A truthful recording of enormous loss and a lyric epitaph for a family farm.
Book Description
In Songs of the Fluteplayer, the charm and challenge of the spectacularly beautiful American Southwest are irresistibly captured by a woman who risked much to discover a new life and greater meaning there. Sharman Apt Russell and her husband moved to the Mimbres Valley in southwestern New Mexico in order to lead a simpler yet more substantial life. Their efforts to be self-sufficient-building an adobe house, giving birth at home, growing their own food-shattered many ideals and forced compromises but also renewed their ties to each other and kindled their respect for the land and its people. The American Southwest that Russell fell in love with comes to life vividly in her writing. From Navajo weavers to illegal Mexican workers, trading posts to prehistoric pottery, water rights disputes to the omnipresent fluteplayer Kokopelli-the energy and wonder of the Southwest is celebrated in this enchanting book.
Customer Reviews:
Moving collection of essays about author's life in the SW........1996-12-28
In this lovely collection of essays, the author, Russell, explores the relationship between the American search for mythological Home to the landscape, the community and the self. In her title essay, she writes about memories of her father, a former test pilot in the Air Force, who died while setting a new speed record in the X-2 over another desert in California, when Russell was still a child. Her memories of him are recovered through her exploration of the image of the Kokopelli man, part of the mythological landscape of the Southwest that she struggles to identify with in this search for Home. In the other essays, Russell tries to balance her utopian ideal of a quiet, slow-paced life in a small rural community with the reality of the isolation and financial struggle of raising a family and building a home in the harsh, though stunningly beautiful, landscape of the Southwest desert, along with the politics and problems that arise in their eccentric and somewhat transitory community. Russell writes to understand, to make meaning--and the writing seems to discover itself over and over, allowing the reader a fresh journey, no matter the number of readings. Beautiful language
Book Description
To save their marriage and their sanity, the author and his wife sold their belongings, packed up their two-year-old son, and moved to a rundown farmhouse in the country without any plans past surviving the year. Living as though it were the year 1900, they struggled with recalcitrant livestock, garden-destroying bugs, rain that would not come, and their own insecurities, to ultimately discover a sense of community and a sense of themselves that changed not only their marriage, but the entire Swoope, Virginia community. Lyrically told and powerfully evocative, this memoir for the modern age deals with the growing sense of disassociation and yearning to escape the frenetic pace of daily life in today’s society.
Customer Reviews:
Quite an experiment!.......2007-09-22
I found this book very engaging, hard to put down. I wish that Logan gave an update about their return to the future at the end of the book. I did find one thing troubling, I have hard time believing that their son (age 2) became ill just once and never required a visit to the doctor. Also, the fact that Logan was so unsure about his wife using a car and a phone when she had a medical problem. An experiment is one thing health should be paramount!
Engaging yet oddly unsatisfying.......2007-08-22
It's difficult to know how to rate this book. It left me feeling somewhat ambivalent. Make no mistake, it's a fun, fast, easy summer read. But, I was hoping it would offer so much more in terms of insights into our modern dependence on technologies that perhaps aren't really so important. Maybe it's unfair of me to expect so much out of what amounts to a tale of living for one year as an experiment.
This book is so similar to Eric Brende's "Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology" that it's difficult not to almost treat them as different tales of the same experience. In both books, a young couple elects to live without modern technology for one year as a way of testing whether they can deal with the ramifications of rejecting fast-paced modern society and all that it entails. In Brende's book he and his wife go to live amongst an old order sect that is even stricter than the Amish. In Ward's book, he and his wife Heather embark on an adventure wherein they buy an old farm and vow not to use any (or much) technology that wasn't in existence in 1900. It winds up amounting to almost the same thing in practical terms.
Both couples try this knowing that it's merely an experiment that they have to put up with for one year. Both books are told from an almost chauvanistic male standpoint. Neither book details all that much about specific technology that they do use. (Brende gets into minor descriptions about some of the machinery that the Amish who aren't Amish use, but it's minimal. Ward pretty much ignores or glosses over the finer points of most of the tools he uses.) Neither book gives any real voice to the woman in the couple. Neither book serves as a how-to guide for anybody wishing for whatever reason to live off the grid or adapt to a more simple lifestyle. Both authors are very candid about their own failings, misjudgments and foibles. Both are easy and fun to read.
Perhaps it's unfair of me to have been expecting so much more. But, it seems that such an adventure could have greatly benefited from deciding to document it before the process began, rather than as an afterthought much later. I don't know what either Brende or Ward had in mind going into their experiments. Maybe they were so sick of modern technology that they simply wanted a working vacation in which they didn't have to deal with documenting their progress as they went. Certainly the level of farm work that they wind up doing might make documenting it daily to be an arduous task easily put off until much later. That's easy enough to understand.
I'm somewhat harder on Logan Ward precisely because he's a writer. He could have approached this whole experiment as doing research for a book, and documented their progress along the way, and I feel that the book would be far more substantive and enriching. For whatever reason, he didn't take that approach. So, we're left with a book that's intriguing but not as educational or insightful as it might have been. It's still a good story.
What's harder to understand are little things like Logan Ward's decision not to take pictures. Photography was well established in the mid 1800's and the Civil War was well documented photographically. By 1888 Kodak had introduced a user friendly box camera and in 1900, precisely the year that the Ward's chose to emulate, Kodak introduced the Brownie camera which was the first truly mass market camera in history. Granted, with only 150,000 produced, a subsistence farmer in VA might not have had access to one. But having a few select pictures of their experiment, done in period style would certainly not be bending the rules any more than travel by car or using the telephone, both of which Logan's wife Heather eventually does out of necessity before their year is done.
That brings me to something else. I find it odd that both Ward and Brende have momentary periods where they seem like they don't really take their bride's health all that seriously. When his wife Heather is having major abdominal pains, Ward, at one point admits that he wondered whether they were serious enough to compromise their little experiment in even a fairly minor way even though they'd left phone service on in case of just such emergencies. I'm certainly not criticizing the decisions, but both case studies show the need for having a good set of agreements in advance on just what is acceptable in a variety of situations. I guess what bothered me about that particular situation in this book is not how it was resolved, but rather the attitude that Logan wasn't really going to lift a finger to help his wife.
Another thing that's bothersome in both Ward's tale and in Brende's incredibly similar tale is how utterly dependent they were on outside help. Were it not for the kindness of others who didn't necessarily play by the same self-imposed rules, neither experiment would've ended well. In that regard, neither winds up being true to self-sufficiency, though both try mightily. Perhaps that's the real take-home message is that it takes a community to be even marginally self-sufficient. That's not a bad message and to that end I commend both Ward and Brende for helping others to see that point.
I'll end with one valuable tid-bit that I did glean from "See You in A Hundred Years". That is that going into winter Logan mentions having put up 350 canned jars of produce to last them through the winter. Come spring time, he still has enough left to last the required time and reflects that it was enough canned goods, supplemented with dried goods, to get he and his wife and toddler through the winter. That was precisely the kind of information I was seeking. I would've loved to know how many cords of wood they used for heating and cooking. I would've loved to know more insights about cooking on a wood stove, and canning in such prodigious amounts. I would have loved to know more about just what is involved in making goat cheese, etc. I feel like he missed quite a few opportunities to share tips and insights gleaned from performing such farm duties in real life as opposed to simply reading about them in hobby books. But, this is not a how-to documentation so much as just a tale of how one man reflects on one experiment and the things he and his wife learned about each other and their relationship to society as a result.
A wonderful trip back in time.......2007-08-10
I found this book through the Library Journal, and picked it up immediately. I have always loved the documentaries where modern people attempt to live in past "times" such as the 1940's, 1900's, or even Regency England. This book went into detail of the actual experience, instead of just showing the conflict and drama that the television shows often detail (rather than displaying the monotony and plain hard work it took to live back then). I found the writing to be highly enjoyable and amusing, and actually felt like I was right there along with them, struggling to prove that they can survive using only 1900's products and methods. I would have loved for this book to have been twice as long, and to let us know what happened after the project was over! Great read, I would recommend it to anyone!
Entertaining!.......2007-08-09
I don't know how i found out about this book, but after reading the reviews i promptly ordered and even more promptly read it - couldn't put it down. The author is a good writer (professional). I laughed out loud often. Kudos to this couple for their 12 month return to the year 1900, thereby providing us with valuable helps for basic survival, if and when ever needed. I should say, "when", because i think we will need these skills.
Authentic and compelling.......2007-07-23
Logan Ward does a masterful job of relating his family's experience of living a country experience as it really was in 1900. Giving up every modern convenience and raising his own food and preparing it for the winter, his experience with barnyard animals and pests of nature (without modern pesticides) and the hardships he and his wife face, determined not to resort to 20th century conviences, is astounding. He writes with wit and drama to relate this 12 month experience. I wish I knew how much of it he continued as he still resides in Virgina from the family's original New York lifestyle. I doubt he still uses the outhouse or bathes in a tin bucket on the back porch, but his recounting of when he and his wife (and 2-year-old son) did is part of the living experience he writes about. It is very well written and I enjoyed every page of it, including the epilog.
Book Description
More than a century after John Wesley Powell launched his boat on the Green River, Ellen Meloy spent eight years of seasonal floats through Utah's Desolation Canyon with her husband, a federal river manager. She came to know the history and natural history of this place well enough to call it home, and has recorded her observations in a book that is as wide-ranging as the river and as wild as the wilderness through which it runs.
Customer Reviews:
A softer Ed Abbey........2006-05-12
This book is a gem. If Abbey had a feminine counter-voice Meloy's would be it. Like Desert Solitaire Meloy speaks of the raw, untamed beauty of the southern Utah wilderness. We travel with her and her husband Mark down the Green River through Desolation Canyon and deep into the wild places of the human psyche. Meloy takes us back to our more primitive self with an eye for detail and a soft, gentle humor. She transports us on a journey that few of us will ever take. Through her eyes we see the river from a myriad of uses and view points: the prehistoric Fremont culture, early river runners to the modern river rat. Like Abbey before her, Meloy gives us a sense of place that comes alive through her words. This is an ode to a wild river and as she feared, possibly a eulogy. Desolation Canyon its environs remains one of the more endangered places in the southwest. The wild in all of us lost a voice with her untimely death in 2004.
Raven's Exile.......2006-03-29
A meditation on the Green River, water in the West, and wilderness.
I first read Meloy's EATING STONE, a book about desert bighorns. In comparison to that book, where the specificity of the theme reined in the author's imagination somewhat, RAVEN'S EXILE ranges widely. I think it should be read as a meditation/rant rather than as a factual account or even a memoir. At times the language is poetic; at other times I found it imprecise and over-the-top. Sometimes Meloy's outrage at American culture's lack of concern for wilderness, the hubris of building huge cities in the middle of the desert, and the arrogance of wanting to replace native fish with others that give better "sport" is acutely expressed and trenchant; sometimes the text degenerates into idiosyncracy and misanthropy.
Recommended, but I tend to think Craig Childs' book on water in the desert addresses the topic better.
Book Description
The sequel to Crosscurrents, which Library Journal hailed as one of the best fly-fishing books of 2001.
Customer Reviews:
Editorial Review by Charles Rangeley-Wilson from The Field.......2002-04-17
Two years ago Jim Babb published a collection of fishing essays in a book called Crosscurrents. I enjoyed that book more than any book I'd read on fly-fishing in some while. When I get Gray's through the door, the magazine Babb edits - a kind of US version of The Field in camouflage with adverts for bigger utility vehicles - I always turn first to his fishing essay. Babb elevates the ordinary and makes accessible the far-fetched. He can get inside your head and say something to which you'll think "oh yeah, that's right, that's how I see it" - only Babb expresses it for you.
In River Music you will find essays on Riverside cuisine and theories on social grouping according to whether you drink beer or spirits when camped by a river. There's also an exploration of a mid-life crisis played out while fishing and a brilliant story of ice-fishing.
The theme that links it all is the heritage of a musical father, Babb's tinnitus that sounds like a river in symphony and accompanies him wherever he goes, and the endless and soothing music that rivers make. This is a good book and I recommend you read it.
Charles Rangeley-Wilson
Average customer rating:
- Honest, Intriguing True Adventure
- Both the how and why for time spent in the wilderness.
- Not just a canoeing book - a personal perspective on life
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Three Seasons in the Wind : 950 Kilometres by Canoe Down Northern Canada's Thelon River; 2nd Edition
Kathleen Pitt , and
Michael Pitt
Manufacturer: Trafford Publishing USA Distribution
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0968658105 |
Book Description
Step outside the pressures of modern life, and join Michael and Kathleens quest for isolation, beauty, solitude and adventure as they travel alone across the Barren Grounds of Canada. Their journey begins camped amid the decaying ice of a new Arctic spring, and ends 37 days later as they harvest blueberries before a final descent to Baker Lake at the head of Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay.
Simply, yet eloquently written, Three Seasons in the Wind transports the readers imagination to the very banks of the magical Thelon River. By so doing, your heart will awaken to an ancient, nomadic lifestyle of physical challenge and timeless joy that is available to all who dare to pursue their dreams in Canadas pristine Northern landscape.
Customer Reviews:
Honest, Intriguing True Adventure.......2003-07-11
My only real complaint about this book is that I wish it were longer and had more photos. The style is a combination of the authors' personal diaries they kept while on their month-long voyage down the wild Thelon River in far northern Canada where the open tundra dominates. Their writing was very honest, and I felt intrigued to be reading a firsthand account instead of a recollection that you feel was written and embellished after their trip. At the end of the book, one of the authors describes a portage in great detail and provides a play-by-play of the physical rigors and also the emotional state during this long and arduous portage. This is a wonderful and memorable piece of writing, and I wish that they had given that level of detail to the entire trip. Nonetheless, highly recommended for those who love true adventure stories and who have any interest in a long wilderness canoe trip.
Both the how and why for time spent in the wilderness........1999-10-16
This book succeeds through its unpretentious and honest description of a journey well taken. The concurrent use of diary entries from both of the Pitts gives the narrative a nice balanced feel. The details of how to prepare and do what is required by a trip such as this are very clearly explained without bogging down the story. The canoe seems to represent chiefly a means, rather than an end, because the authors are best at defining why they did this in the first place. Their story provides inspiration particularly to those of us who have not been there before.
Not just a canoeing book - a personal perspective on life.......1999-09-30
I anticipated that this book might be just another canoe guidebook about a northern Canadian river since its size and layout indicated that it wasn't a coffee table photo collection - except for the striking cover photograph. The contents were, therefore, an unexpected and pleasant surprise. Yes - the book does describe a canoe journey - but it seems to me that this is primarily a narrative of personal development. The effective use of their diaries to evoke the experience of the landscape, and the insights of this husband and wife partnership about their experiences and feelings make the book far more than a story about canoeing. The story uses their experience to give the reader some direct insight into the personal development of two apparently ordinary people who undertake what to many of us would be an unthinkable challenge. In our modern, urbanized society, there is little opportunity to experience the spirit of the early North American explorers - the Pitts manage to deliver that sense of discovery (both personal and geographic) in the telling of their journey through their respective diaries. This is not a "canoe book" - it is tale of two people confronting the challenges of life - who just happened to be canoeing at the time. One was left wishing the river had been longer so that we could share their experience for a few more pages.
Average customer rating:
- A true acomplishment for images of the historic Hudson Valley
- INCREDIBLE!
- The Beard Of Earth
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The Romantic Landscape: Photographs in the Tradition of the New York Hudson Valley Painters
Stan Lichens
Manufacturer: Pomegranate Communications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0764928899 |
Book Description
The Romantic Landscape journeys through the four seasons of the Hudson Valley, immortalized by the Hudson Valley Painters. Through color- and computer-enhanced photographs, photographer Stan Lichens has captured the mystique and spectacular scenery of this historic region.
Sun-dappled valleys, rugged river terrain, vast mountains and forests, and gorgeous homes abound throughout the historic Hudson Valley. Among the residential portraits are The Locusts, a nineteenth-century estate in Staatsburg; the Vanderbilt Estate in Hyde Park; and Montgomery Place, one of the country's most beautiful estates, in Red Hook. Equally dramatic are Lichens' nature portraits of Haines Falls, farmland in Clinton Corners, the Rosendale Caves, wheatfields in Ancramdale, and a host of other inviting, perfect images captured at the perfect moment of the season.
Of all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination. —Washington Irving
About the Author Stan Lichens teaches and works in graphic design, furniture, and architecture. Owner of the former Astor gatehouse in Rhinebeck, New York, he belongs to several historic preservation groups and is dedicated to documenting the architectural and natural environment of the Hudson Valley. He tints his ethereal photographs with pastels, watercolor pencils, and oil crayons and then enhances them with digital technology.
Customer Reviews:
A true acomplishment for images of the historic Hudson Valley.......2007-08-14
As the writer from Brooklyn has said the images are a little unrealistic but thats what makes the book so beautiful so enticing. I found the images inspiring and easy on the eyes. A true accomplishment in the world of photography.
A very beautiful introduction, by his spouse making you understand Lichens connection through the pictures he takes of the Hudson Valley.
INCREDIBLE!.......2006-08-17
The views in this book are breathtaking and stunning. The Hudson Valley is truly a stunning place!
The Beard Of Earth .......2005-03-07
Stan Lichens' The Romantic Landscape: Photographs In The Tradition of The New York Hudson Valley Painters (2004) presents a collection of seventy-five exceptional photographs of the New York State's Hudson River Valley. Grouped in accordance with the four seasons, the valley--a cradle of American history and folklore, and home to Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle--is alternately revealed in all its lush beauty, majesty, and haunted, twilit power.
Originally taken in black and white, Lichens, inspired by the Hudson River School Painters, has hand tinted each with "French watercolor pencils, pastels, and oil crayons" and then further "digitally manipulated" the images.
The results would probably have been far more powerful had Lichens let the original photographs speak for themselves, since the enhancement process greatly reduces their overall power in every instance. Though the palate of the winter landscapes are suitably muted, the artifice is immediately and awkwardly apparent in most of the others. The overall effect is not one of subtle or studied romance, but of an easy-access pleasantness which reduces the images to the level of Sierra Club calendar art. Only tangentially do the colorized photographs, which fairly caricaturize the profound beauty of nature, have any genuine relation to the work of Thomas Cole, Fredric E. Church, and Robert Walter Weir.
Lichens has also allowed his spouse, Lois Guarino, to write the introduction, which suggests Guarino may have provided a less than objective appraisal and overview of the book's content.
Books:
- I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl
- If Truth Be Told (Five Star Expressions)
- Inferno
- Infinite Crisis (DC Comics)
- Jack London : Novels and Stories : Call of the Wild / White Fang / The Sea-Wolf / Klondike and Other Stories (Library of America)
- Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life
- Les Miserables (Modern Library)
- Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Interactive Edition (9th Edition)
- Managing Customers as Investments: The Strategic Value of Customers in the Long Run
- Mark of the Lion : A Voice in the Wind, An Echo in the Darkness, As Sure As the Dawn (Vol 1-3)
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