A Bumblebee’s Balcony

A Bumblebee’s Balcony

Author: Sundari Sivasubbu

Publisher: Notion Press

Published: 2019-01-10

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1684662699

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Do you think you are good enough to pursue the dream that you held dear as a child? Or, did you give it up a long time back because someone said that it was foolish, not possible, or that you were not talented enough for your dream? What if the bumblebee had listened to scientists who snubbed its short, stunted, funny wings, and believed that it could not fly? Is it possible to remain unshackled by, and rise above, the assumptions of a society obsessed with ‘normal’? Do you believe that you can be happy at any time, at any point in your life, despite the circumstances? “A Bumblebee’s Balcony” asks these questions as it traces the joys and pangs of a little girl in a village who has cerebral palsy, and how the big city was the backdrop in her beautiful journey towards self-discovery. It traces the intimate account of ordinary life fraught with physical and socio-psychological barriers: What it’s like to be the odd one out, the tryst with assistive aids, gender-specific barriers, chaotic trials while commuting through various means of transport, insights on workplace diversity, her tumultuous emotional journey, and the pursuit of well-being, spirituality and giving back. The author sees joy and purpose in what could have easily been labelled as maudlin, as she vividly describes the persistent mind-body conflict, the inner and outer battles, the quest to understand her identity, rising above personal and societal prejudices, and succeeding in carving an identity devoid of bitterness. In its true essence, A Bumblebee’s Balcony is a simple, straight-from-the-heart tribute to love, strength, hope and an unshakable faith in the Universe…


Floratopia: 110 Flower Garden Ideas for Your Yard, Patio, or Balcony

Floratopia: 110 Flower Garden Ideas for Your Yard, Patio, or Balcony

Author: Jan Johnsen

Publisher: The Countryman Press

Published: 2021-02-16

Total Pages: 531

ISBN-13: 1682685993

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Create a floral haven with help from a celebrated garden designer and flower lover. Jan Johnsen’s latest book, Floratopia: 110 Flower Garden Ideas for Your Yard, Patio, or Balcony showcases beautiful flower varieties and offers illustrated design ideas that will have you seeing the potential for colorful flowers, both annual and perennial, in all kinds of outdoor spaces, large or small. Essential advice—such as "Hot Weather Flower Garden Tips," "Tiny Space, Tiny Garden," and "Tips for Layering with Flowers"—is accompanied by lush photos and informative captions. Selected growing tips—such as "Become a Rake Master" and "Should I Cut Back in Winter?"—answer common questions and ensure success for gardeners of all skill levels. Floratopia both inspires and enlightens; it underscores the role of flowers as pollinator magnets and encourages the appreciation of flowers throughout their entire lifecycle. Choice tips for butterfly gardens, combining grasses and flowers, and deer-resistant combinations also include recommended cultivars and suggested soil conditions. This engaging book is divided into six chapters: Flowers in Pots and Planters Flower Garden Planting Tips Flower Garden Design Tips and Green Thoughts Themes for Flower Gardens A Few Choice Perennial Flowers to Try A Selection of Favorite Annual Flowers. Floratopia appeals to gardeners and flower lovers alike. Jan’s encouraging voice, experience, and contagious passion for flower garden design will inspire you to plant joyful blossoms wherever you live.


The Pollinator Victory Garden

The Pollinator Victory Garden

Author: Kim Eierman

Publisher: Quarry Books

Published: 2020-01-07

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 1631597507

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The passion and urgency that inspired WWI and WWII Victory Gardens is needed today to meet another threat to our food supply and our environment—the steep decline of pollinators. The Pollinator Victory Garden offers practical solutions for winning the war against the demise of these essential animals. Pollinators are critical to our food supply and responsible for the pollination of the vast majority of all flowering plants on our planet. Pollinators include not just bees, but many different types of animals, including insects and mammals. Beetles, bats, birds, butterflies, moths, flies, and wasps can be pollinators. But, many pollinators are in trouble, and the reality is that most of our landscapes have little to offer them. Our residential and commercial landscapes are filled with vast green pollinator deserts, better known as lawns. These monotonous green expanses are ecological wastelands for bees and other pollinators. With The Pollinator Victory Garden, you can give pollinators a fighting chance. Learn how to transition your landscape into a pollinator haven by creating a habitat that includes pollinator nutrition, larval host plants for butterflies and moths, and areas for egg laying, nesting, sheltering, overwintering, resting, and warming. Find a wealth of information to support pollinators while improving the environment around you: • The importance of pollinators and the specific threats to their survival• How to provide food for pollinators using native perennials, trees, and shrubs that bloom in succession• Detailed profiles of the major pollinator types and how to attract and support each one• Tips for creating and growing a Pollinator Victory Garden, including site assessment, planning, and planting goals• Project ideas like pollinator islands, enriched landscape edges, revamped foundation plantings, meadowscapes, and other pollinator-friendly lawn alternatives The time is right for a new gardening movement. Every yard, community garden, rooftop, porch, patio, commercial, and municipal landscape can help to win the war against pollinator decline with The Pollinator Victory Garden.


Pedagogy in the Anthropocene

Pedagogy in the Anthropocene

Author: Michael Paulsen

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-03-12

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 3030909808

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This book explores new pedagogical challenges and potentials of the Anthropocene era. The authors argue that this new epoch, with an unstable climate, new kinds of globally spreading viruses, and new knowledges, calls for a new way of educating and an alertness to new philosophies of education and pedagogical imaginations, thoughts, and practices. Addressing the linkages between the Anthropocene and Pedagogy across a broad pedagogical spectrum that is both formal and informal, the editors and their contributors emphasize a re-imagining of education that serves to deepen our understanding of the capacities and values of life.


Understanding Disability

Understanding Disability

Author: Ranu Uniyal

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-11-02

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9819949254

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This edited volume brings together contributions on disability studies organized around two themes: literary and sociological aspects. The contributors include academics, disability activists, and researchers from within and outside the Indian periphery. While the book strengthens the disability discourse and contributes to building academic scholarship on this subject, it also promotes disability activism by giving space to both direct practitioners and persons with disabilities. The chapters discuss various analytical and literary aspects of the marginalization experienced by the disabled community and bring forth new and elaborate perspectives. It draws connections across multiple identities and includes personal narratives across nations, cultures and societies. It is an excellent research resource on disability studies in India for scholars and students in the area of humanities, education, law, sociology and social work, while at the same time also addressing the global context.


The Mind of a Bee

The Mind of a Bee

Author: Lars Chittka

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-07-26

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0691180474

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A rich and surprising exploration of the intelligence of bees Most of us are aware of the hive mind—the power of bees as an amazing collective. But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals? In The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities. He shows that they are profoundly smart, have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others. They may even possess consciousness. Taking readers deep into the sensory world of bees, Chittka illustrates how bee brains are unparalleled in the animal kingdom in terms of how much sophisticated material is packed into their tiny nervous systems. He looks at their innate behaviors and the ways their evolution as foragers may have contributed to their keen spatial memory. Chittka also examines the psychological differences between bees and the ethical dilemmas that arise in conservation and laboratory settings because bees feel and think. Throughout, he touches on the fascinating history behind the study of bee behavior. Exploring an insect whose sensory experiences rival those of humans, The Mind of a Bee reveals the singular abilities of some of the world’s most incredible creatures.


The Birds

The Birds

Author: Daphne du Maurier

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2013-12-17

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 031625360X

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Including the brilliantly frightening short story that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, this collection from the author of Rebecca is a classic work of alienation and horror. The chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's dominance over the natural world. The mountain paradise of "Monte Veritv?" promises immortality, but at a terrible price; a neglected wife haunts her husband in the form of an apple tree; a professional photographer steps out from behind the camera and into his subject's life; a date with a cinema usherette leads to a walk in the cemetery; and a jealous father finds a remedy when three's a crowd . . . "Continually provokes both pity and terror...Anyone starting this book under the impression that he may sleepily relax is in for a shock." —The Observer (UK)


The Short Story and Photography, 1880's-1980's

The Short Story and Photography, 1880's-1980's

Author: Jane Marjorie Rabb

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780826318718

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For over a hundred years stories about photographs and photography have reflected the profound uncertainties and inconclusive endings of the modern world. For many writers, photography, supposedly the most realistic of the arts, turns out to be the most ambiguous. As Jane Rabb observes in her introduction, a number of the stories in this collection involve mysteries, perhaps because photography has a capacity for both documentary reality and moral and psychological ambiguity. Many nineteenth-century writers represented here, including Thomas Hardy and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, helped make short fiction as respectable as the novel. Some of them were even serious photographers themselves. The twentieth century is arguably a golden age for both the short story and photography. This collection includes examples from a worldly group of writer--Eugène Ionesco, Julio Cortá¡zar, Michel Tournier, and Italo Calvino, as well as the Chinese writer Bing Xin and John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, and Raymond Carver. In this wide range of stories, varying from sentimental to obsessive, to sinister, to tragic and even fatal, the reader will find provocative examples of the confluence of the short story and photography, both once considered the bastard stepchildren of literature and art.


Amuse-Bouche

Amuse-Bouche

Author: Arnon Grunberg

Publisher: Comma Press

Published: 2013-12-03

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

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‘When you’re dead, I figure you can quit adjusting to other people, but until then life is all about adjusting.’ So reflects Arnon Grunberg, as he finds himself high-fiving an elderly drug-dealer and her husband in a Las Vegas hotel room (‘We use it before sex’). Bizarre, garrulous, self-confident, often desperately lonely; such is the variety of characters Grunberg meets – in Amsterdam or New York – it’s thanks only to this ability to adjust, and quietly tune in, that we’re able to share so many private worlds, or be moved by the most fleeting encounters. From the rich widow blowing her husband’s fortune on slot machines because she ‘doesn’t believe in an afterlife’, to the language student telling of her arrival in America under the hood of a truck, Grunberg moves effortlessly between worlds. Be it cynical high society New York, claustrophobic family arguments back in Amsterdam, or simply small-talking with waiters in the people-watching capital of the world, Grunberg steals glimpses deep into the most guarded of lives, sharing moments of joy and absurdity at every turn. The perfect appetiser for a major, emerging voice. 'Deadpan, offbeat, quirkily comic but steeped in loneliness' - The Independent, 20 March . ‘The wit and sardonic intelligence that shine through Arnon Grunberg’s prose make it a continual pleasure to read.’ – J.M. Coetzee on The Jewish Messiah ‘A literary treat’ – Hans Warren, Rotterdams Dagblad


Beekeeping

Beekeeping

Author: Joachim Petterson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 1681881543

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This multifaceted book offers insight into everything bee-related: pollination, gardening, beekeeping and recipes. Whether you’re a first-time beekeeper or looking to improve and expand your backyard beekeeping, this book is a must-have. Beekeeping might seem exotic or old-fashioned, but around the world it is becoming more and more common to find a hive or two in urban spaces and suburban backyards. Some modern beekeepers are inspired by the desire to help out the frequently beleaguered creatures, others simply enjoy fresh honey from the most local of sources—the backyard garden. This book discusses your options for setting up a hive almost anywhere, how to plant a bee-friendly garden, and how to harvest and use your very own honey. Not only is it a great hobby, you’ll also be rewarded with a plentiful supply of honey that you can use in tea as well as for cooking, baking and perhaps even lip salve and skin cream. Everything the modern day beekeeper needs and more: Becoming a Beekeeper Setting Up Your Hive Getting the Right Gear Planting a Bee-Friendly Garden Trouble-Shoot Your Hive Harvest the Honey Plan for the Winter The honeybee is one of our greatest natural resources; bees work hard to pollinate our gardens and do an important job that we couldn’t do without. But bees are finding it increasingly difficult in the world that they share with us. States are reporting a hive of activity in the ‘backyards’ of rural and urban beekeepers. In fact, many states are beginning to alter preexisting ordinances in order to encourage more individuals to start beekeeping. No other hobby can simultaneously help save the world and bring sweet treats to your table!