Why is land so important? It is where our food grows, and what we live on. Readers find out how to keep our land clean and safe in Carol Greene's narrative.
“Oddný Eir is an authentic author, philosopher and mystic. She weaves together diaries and fiction. She is the writer I feel can best express the female psyche of now and has bridged the gap between rural Iceland and Western philosophy. A true pioneer!!!!!!!!” —Björk The winner of the Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize in 2012, Land of Love and Ruins is the debut novel by a daring new voice in international fiction: Oddný Eir. Written in the form of a diary but with fantastical linguistic verve, the narrator sets out on a universal quest: to find a place to belong—and a way of being in the world. Paradoxically, her longing to settle down drives her to embark on all kinds of journeys, physical and mental, through time and space, in order to find answers to questions that concern not only her personally, but also the whole of humankind. She explores various modes of living, ponders different types of relationships and contemplates her bond with her family, land and nation; trying to find a balance between companionship and independence, movement and stability, past, present, and future. An enchanting blend of autobiography, diary, philosophical inquiry, and fantasy, Land of Love and Ruins is a richly imagined and utterly unique book about being human in the modern world.
These essays range over several subject areas - longer essays about Southern heritage and history, pieces regarding the present assault on the symbols of that heritage, short semi-biographical items on diverse figures who have played a role in Southern history, various reviews.
Voices from every direction beckon us, even push us, toward better and faster technology, with the promise of more wealth, more pleasure, and, consequently, more happiness. But have we become so bewitched by the siren song of material progress that we've lost the ability not just to achieve, but to discern what true happiness is? What criteria do we use to plan for the future, for retirement? At the end of our earthly lives, how will we measure our fruitfulness? In this book Marcus Grodi discusses what he and his family discovered, mostly by surprise, after moving from the city to twenty-five acres of Ohio farmland. This move involved a radical shift in priorities for all of them, but mostly it helped them to discover some critical truths about our relationship to nature and to nature's Creator that apply regardless of where a person lives. He offers wonderful reflections on his going-back-to-the-land experience as a metaphor for drawing closer to God.
Private property is everywhere. Almost anywhere you walk in the United States, you will spot “No Trespassing” and “Private Property” signs on trees and fence posts. In America, there are more than a billion acres of grassland pasture, cropland, and forest, and miles and miles of coastlines that are mostly closed off to the public. Meanwhile, America’s public lands are threatened by extremist groups and right-wing think tanks who call for our public lands to be sold to the highest bidder and closed off to everyone else. If these groups get their way, public property may become private, precious green spaces may be developed, and the common good may be sacrificed for the benefit of the wealthy few. Ken Ilgunas, lifelong traveler, hitchhiker, and roamer, takes readers back to the nineteenth century, when Americans were allowed to journey undisturbed across the country. Today, though, America finds itself as an outlier in the Western world as a number of European countries have created sophisticated legal systems that protect landowners and give citizens generous roaming rights to their countries' green spaces. Inspired by the United States' history of roaming, and taking guidance from present-day Europe, Ilgunas calls into question our entrenched understanding of private property and provocatively proposes something unheard of: opening up American private property for public recreation. He imagines a future in which folks everywhere will have the right to walk safely, explore freely, and roam boldly—from California to the New York island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters.
A timely and moving collection from the renowned inaugural poet on issues facing our country and people—immigration, gun violence, racism, LGBTQ issues, and more. Through an oracular yet intimate and accessible voice, Richard Blanco addresses the complexities and contradictions of our nationhood and the unresolved sociopolitical matters that affect us all. Blanco digs deep into the very marrow of our nation through poems that interrogate our past and present, grieve our injustices, and note our flaws, but also remember to celebrate our ideals and cling to our hopes. Charged with the utopian idea that no single narrative is more important than another, this book asserts that America could and ought someday to be a country where all narratives converge into one, a country we can all be proud to love and where we can all truly thrive. The poems form a mosaic of seemingly varied topics: the Pulse nightclub massacre; an unexpected encounter on a visit to Cuba; the forced exile of 8,500 Navajos in 1868; a lynching in Alabama; the arrival of a young Chinese woman at Angel Island in 1938; the incarceration of a gifted writer; and the poet’s abiding love for his partner, who he is finally allowed to wed as a gay man. But despite each poem’s unique concern or occasion, all are fundamentally struggling with the overwhelming question of how to love this country.
"Instructional, humorous, and intriguing anecdotes on land and real estate purchase, sale, conservation and management. Chilling warnings of International, Federal, State and local grabs for your real estate and property rights; Agenda 21, Smart-Growth, Regionalism, the EPA and FDIC-not the friends of land and real estate owners. This is an absolutely unique, highly controversial digest of secrets shared by an expert with a forty-two year, 1.5 billion dollar plus career in land. You will laugh, you will frown and you will shake your head in disbelief. These real-life stories, about successes and failures, are packed with essential truths and valuable instruction. Spiritual and financial lessons gleaned from all facets of land, and land-based real estate transactions, regardless of size, use, or location-from one-third of an acre to thousands. Today's uncertain climate and unstable economic times make these professional secrets invaluable-purchase, sale, value, tax benefit, banking systems, and even the darker facets of federal and state attempts at control-everything is covered here-affording you the opportunity to use the tempest to your advantage. Are you an owner of land or real estate of any size, type or location? A wanna-be owner searching for an inflation safeguard? A haven? Lifestyle change? Security? Nostalgic for the rural roots of your youth? Tax Advantage? Spiritual connection? Family legacy? Forced to sell? These volumes will instruct, entertain, and open your eyes to the joys, and the dangers. The book studies many previously taboo, or ignored subjects you need to know-all critical to your enjoyment of, and profit from, your land and real estate: Agenda 21-The global grab for all private property rights.Mammoth guaranteed real estate profits to banks-all from YOUR pocket and your real estate values. Why your banker says no-what's really happening behind the vault doors. This ain't your mama's appraisal-the rules have changed. When it's time for the seller to sign the dotted line-forget price-let's talk net. Looking under the rocks-due diligence and the "PPPPP Rule" can save a wreck. The government is not here to help you-and it might be on purpose. Buying and selling smart-the silver lining in an age of upheaval. Conservation Easements-get paid to do the right thing-but be careful! Based on the experience and insider knowledge of a fourth-generation land and cattleman, realtor and #1 bestselling, multiple award winning author, Reid Lance Rosenthal's career spans multiple states, three countries and two continents. Reid's first non-fiction work is drawn from over five thousand transactions and laced with true anecdotes of the good, bad and ugly with no-holds-barred, real time, hard-hitting facts-and must know warnings-critical to your heart, your wallet and the future of your property rights. The associated CD/DVD workbook, Green for Green, coming in 2014, will be loaded with graphs, charts, checklists, unique contract provisions, and actual, highly unusual, but proven deal structures (many developed by the author). Land for Love and Money tells all-the good, bad and ugly-of land and land related residential and other improvements and operations. Balm for your heart, enhancement of your wallet, protection of your future, land and real estate-the foundations of freedom-for soul, for security, for you."
An impassioned defence of global immigration from the acclaimed author of Maximum City. Drawing on his family’s own experience emigrating from India to Britain and America, and years of reporting around the world, Suketu Mehta subjects the worldwide anti-immigrant backlash to withering scrutiny. The West, he argues, is being destroyed not by immigrants but by the fear of immigrants. He juxtaposes the phony narratives of populist ideologues with the ordinary heroism of labourers, nannies and others, from Dubai to New York, and explains why more people are on the move today than ever before. As civil strife and climate change reshape large parts of the planet, it is little surprise that borders have become so porous. This Land is Our Land also stresses the destructive legacies of colonialism and global inequality on large swathes of the world. When today’s immigrants are asked, ‘Why are you here?’, they can justly respond, ‘We are here because you were there.’ And now that they are here, as Mehta demonstrates, immigrants bring great benefits, enabling countries and communities to flourish. Impassioned, rigorous, and richly stocked with memorable stories and characters, This Land Is Our Land is a timely and necessary intervention, and literary polemic of the highest order.
WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Natalie Diaz’s highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality. Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: “I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope—in it, a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.