Based on interviews with 8 people who knew Kinloch at various times, at various depths, and from various angles, this report describes Kinloch before during and after its decline and seeks to understand and explain briefly the forces behind that decline. Lastly, it begins to imagine what a future Kinloch may look like.
Claire Macdonald is one of the best known figures in the culinary world today. A hugely successful and critically acclaimed cookery writer for over thirty years, she has garnered numerous awards and has appeared regularly on TV and at cookery demonstrations and courses all over the globe. In addition to all this, for forty years she ran the award-winning and internationally renowned Kinloch House Lodge on Skye. Cited as one of the world's top 25 small hotels in Conde Nast Traveller magazine, Kinloch's restaurant is one of only 16 restaurants in Scotland to have been awarded a coveted Michelin star in 2011. In this book Claire looks back over four eventful decades to tell the story of how she, her husband, clan chief Godfrey Macdonald of Macdonald, and their family built up Kinloch from insignificant beginnings in a remote but spectacularly beautiful corner of Skye to the great culinary institution it is today. Full of anecdote and humour, it also reveals how hard it was to achieve their dream. An intermittent water supply, shortage of telephones, a lack of fresh vegetables and problems with fire regulations were just some of the problems they had to face, not to mention the staff member who preferred mingling with the diners to helping in the kitchen, the guest who disappeared and the gardener with very un-green fingers.
Kinsman Township is part of the Connecticut Western Reserve. It is more reflective of this connection than many communities because John Kinsman, one of 35 men who formed the Connecticut Land Company in 1795 to purchase the land and have it surveyed into five-mile-square townships, actually made this his home and encouraged his Connecticut neighbors to do likewise. Kinsman first saw his land in 1799, traveling via horseback with his brother-in-law Simon Perkins, an agent for the land company who would become the most prominent settler of nearby Warren. Their small entourage entered the area that would become Kinsman and built a cabin near the southeast corner of the current square. The Lakeshore and Southern Michigan Railway came through the area in 1873, leading to a flurry of entrepreneurial activity. A fire dramatically altered the face of the original square, but many new fashionable homes rose out of the ashes. The Kinsman Fair also became a major event in the area, drawing thousands to its commodious facilities. This book commemorates the rich history of Kinsman through vintage photographs.
When engineering students in Canada are soon to graduate, the solemn “Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer,” penned by none other than Rudyard Kipling, charges them with their Obligation to high standards, humility, and ethics. Each budding engineer then receives an Iron Ring to be worn on the small finger of the working hand as a reminder throughout their career. Through the story of the 1907 Quebec Bridge disaster, in which seventy-six men died, author Dan Levert teaches a powerful object lesson in what can happen when that Obligation is forgotten. Woven from transcripts of the inquiry into the collapse, the report of the commissioners, and other sources including the coroner’s inquest, On Cold Iron plays out like a fast-paced thriller. Levert recounts the original 1850s proposals to bridge the St. Lawrence near Quebec City, through the design and construction of what was to be the longest clear span bridge of any kind in the world, to its shocking collapse during construction in August 1907. The missteps, poor policies, hubris, and wrong-headed actions begin to build like a death by a thousand cuts, until its inevitable and horrifying culmination. The meticulously researched and deftly delivered story of this terrible historical event makes fascinating reading for anyone, but even more, it is a powerful cautionary tale and a clarion call for the obligation and responsibility of an engineer.
Side-Stepping Normativity: Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner discusses Sylvia Townsend Warner's highly innovative narrative style, which does not conform to conventional modernist or postmodernist standards, and explores how Warner's short stories shift to off-centre positions. Side-Stepping Normativity further outlines the way in which Warner constantly challenges the categories we apply to classify our surroundings and analyses how Warner succeeds in creating queer, that is, non-heteronormative as well strange and peculiar stories without explicitly opposing the so-called norms of her time. In this, Side-Stepping Normativity joins a vibrant conversation in queer studies which revolves around the question how critics can approach literary texts from a non-antagonistic position. Rather than focussing on the role of the critic, however, this thesis shows that Warner's texts have long achieved what queer theorists seek to achieve on an analytical level.
Since the 1970s, writing workshop has been a go-to method for teaching writing. It’s helped students of all ages find their voices and stories while developing skills and craft. In The Writing Shop, the author reimagines what writing workshop can be. By studying workshops of different kinds—carpentry, textile, machine—she pushes us to see writing workshop the way other makers see their own shops, as places where creativity is fueled by the sensory experience. When the essential elements of all workshops are adopted in writing workshop, the author argues, writers will flourish. The author builds on writing workshop literature to introduce the model to newcomers, while offering practical advice for those looking to strengthen their writing instruction. The Writing Shop illustrates what happens when writing is taught in an authentic shop: play is prioritized, all types of learners are included, and a host of skills beyond the mechanics of composition are embedded in the process of learning to write. With its stories from diverse workshops and emphasis on exploration and experimentation, The Writing Shop shows us that learning to write can be, above all things, fun.
Admirers of Elizabeth Spencer’s writing will welcome back into print her first novel, and her new readers will discover the sources of her notable talent in this book. Published in 1948 to extraordinary attention from such eminent writers as Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and Katherine Anne Porter, this father-and-son story revolves around an old southern theme of family grievances and vendettas. Fire in the Morning recounts the conflict between two families extending over two generations up to the 1930s. The arrival of an innocent stranger flares old arguments and ignites new passions. In Spencer's compelling tale of the half-forgotten violence, the well-deep understanding of father and son, Kinloch Armstrong, the young hero, confronts mysteries of the past. His wife, a newcomer to the area and its legacies, makes friends with a family of traditional rivals. After she is involved in a nighttime wreck and the death of a local man, the past gradually comes to light, and the two families once again become caught up in revelations, hatreds, and conflicts. Spencer faithfully renders the setting—a small, dusty Mississippi town—and the surrounding countryside as it was in the early twentieth century.