Pregnancy is not just a trek from one medical appointment to another but a journey of the heart. Here at last is a guidebook through its sacred terrain. For each week, Orthodox doula Laura Jansson provides a new reflection on a theme specific to the ground covered at that stage. From one milestone to the next, she helps us unearth the spiritual treasures buried within the physical experiences of childbearing. These are gifts of love from a merciful God who reaches out to us, making a perilous expedition into a path of salvation.
Reproduction is among the most basic of human biological functions, both for our distant ancestors and for ourselves, whether we live on the plains of Africa or in North American suburbs. Our reproductive biology unites us as a species, but it has also been an important engine of our evolution. In the way our bodies function today we can see both the imprint of our formative past and implications for our future. It is the infinitely subtle and endlessly dramatic story of human reproduction and its evolutionary context that Peter T. Ellison tells in On Fertile Ground. Ranging from the latest achievements of modern fertility clinics to the lives of subsistence farmers in the rain forests of Africa, this book offers both a remarkably broad and a minutely detailed exploration of human reproduction. Ellison, a leading pioneer in the field, combines the perspectives of anthropology, stressing the range and variation of human experience; ecology, sensitive to the two-way interactions between humans and their environments; and evolutionary biology, emphasizing a functional understanding of human reproductive biology and its role in our evolutionary history. Whether contrasting female athletes missing their periods and male athletes using anabolic steroids with Polish farm women and hunter-gatherers in Paraguay, or exploring the intricate choreography of an implanting embryo or of a nursing mother and her child, On Fertile Ground advances a rich and deeply satisfying explanation of the mechanisms by which we reproduce and the evolutionary forces behind their design.
Rural women comprised the largest part of the adult population of Texas until 1940 and in the American South until 1960. On the cotton farms of Central Texas, women's labor was essential. In addition to working untold hours in the fields, women shouldered
Fertile Ground in Middle Level General Music guides music educators to inspire their middle level students (grades 5–8) to engage more deeply in the general music classroom, where students are given the opportunity to "try on" a range of roles: musician, composer, listener, and critic. The book outlines the Fertile Ground Framework, a teacher's aide for curricular decision-making that unites the middle level concept with the National Core Arts Standards while emphasizing the developmental needs and cultural identities of students. This resource-rich book provides teachers with an array of adaptable classroom support tools, including: Lesson sequences Activity ideas Teacher resources and worksheets "Do-Now" exercises Featuring the real-world perspectives of thirteen music educators, Fertile Ground in Middle Level General Music is both practical and theoretical, presenting methods for creating rich, inspiring learning environments in middle level general music classrooms of all shapes and sizes, and highlighting the unacknowledged strengths that already exist therein. Focused on the aim of motivating students to pursue lifelong music learning, this book helps instructors find joy and excitement in teaching a wide array of musical topics to diverse groups of middle level music students.
If you're starting a business, the statistics prove that your best odds of success are in high technology industries: not just computing and telecom, but also biotech, electronics, manufacturing and materials, medical devices, robotics, and other knowledge-intensive fields. This is the first book to provide a methodology for finding those extraordinary opportunities. Shane shows how to identify market opportunities and competitor weaknesses, evaluate customer needs, manage risk and uncertainty, predict product adoption and diffusion, structure your organization, and protect intellectual property. You'll learn how to take into account crucial issues such as network externalities, and the emergence of dominant designs and technical standards. Unlike other books on entrepreneurship, this one offers solutions specifically targeted at high tech startups. Based on an MBA course taught at MIT, the University of Maryland, and Case Western Reserve University, it brings together insights that were previously scattered across multiple publications -- or never published at all.
A critique of population control narratives reproduced by international development actors in the 21st century Since the turn of the millennium, American media, scientists, and environmental activists have insisted that the global population crisis is “back”—and that the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change is to ensure women’s universal access to contraception. Did the population problem ever disappear? What is bringing it back—and why now? In On Infertile Ground, Jade S. Sasser explores how a small network of international development actors, including private donors, NGO program managers, scientists, and youth advocates, is bringing population back to the center of public environmental debate. While these narratives never disappeared, Sasser argues, histories of human rights abuses, racism, and a conservative backlash against abortion in the 1980s drove them underground—until now. Using interviews and case studies from a wide range of sites—from Silicon Valley foundation headquarters to youth advocacy trainings, the halls of Congress and an international climate change conference—Sasser demonstrates how population growth has been reframed as an urgent source of climate crisis and a unique opportunity to support women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Although well-intentioned—promoting positive action, women’s empowerment, and moral accountability to a global community—these groups also perpetuate the same myths about the sexuality and lack of virtue and control of women and the people of global south that have been debunked for decades. Unless the development community recognizes the pervasive repackaging of failed narratives, Sasser argues, true change and development progress will not be possible. On Infertile Ground presents a unique critique of international development that blends the study of feminism, environmentalism, and activism in a groundbreaking way. It will make any development professional take a second look at the ideals driving their work.
Irene Diamond has written a passionate and provocative book that challenges the feminist movement to step beyond its preconceptions. . . . We desperately need this synthesis. -from the Foreword by Starhaw In a wide-ranging critique of Western thought and practice, ecofeminist Irene Diamond raises unsettling questions about the ethic of control that permeates how we think about fertility, sexuality, agriculture, and the environment.
The Orthodox Christian tradition is filled with wisdom and guidance about the biblical path of salvation. Yet this guidance remains largely inaccessible to parents and often disconnected from the parenting challenges we face in our homes. Parenting Toward the Kingdom will help you make the connections between the spiritual life as we understand it in the Orthodox Church and the ongoing challenges of raising children. It takes the best child development research and connects it with the timeless truths of our Christian faith to offer you real strategies for navigating the challenges of daily life.
Terra preta is the Portuguese name of a type of soil which is thought to have almost miraculous properties. The newspapers are flooded with reports about “black gold,” scientists believe that two of the greatest problems facing the world – climate change and the hunger crisis — can be solved by it. The beauty of it is that everyone can do something about it because since 2005 the secret of producing this black soil has been revealed — and it is a secret that seemed to have been lost forever with the downfall of the once thriving Indian culture of the Amazon basin. The recipe is astonishingly simple as all you need are kitchen or garden wastes, charcoal and earthworms, so it can be produced on every balcony or on the smallest of garden plots. The trio of authors Scheub, Pieplow and Schmidt, set off on a treasure hunt and condensed all the knowledge about the world’s most fertile soil into a convenient guidebook. In addition to a sound instruction manual on producing terra preta and organic charcoal (biochar), the handbook covers fundamental principles from climate farming to closed-loop economy. It makes a passionate plea against synthetic fertilizers and genetic technology and offers indispensable advice to all those who feel strongly about healthy food. Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.
