A flock of birds, even a skein of geese perhaps -- but a cete of badgers, or a grist of bees? The collective nouns of animals and birds have long inspired and intrigued us. Many have their roots in medieval times, in particular applied to those creatures hunted by man, and subject to the etiquette of their proper group names. Author Steve Palin has beautifully illustrated and given the background to about fifty different animals and birds with interesting collective nouns -- and listed 420 of them in his glossary. This elegant little book will appeal to all those with a fascination for the English language, those who want the answers for quizzes and crossword puzzles, and those with an interest in animals and birds.
A Murmuration of Starlings elegizes the martyrs of the civil rights movement, whose names are inscribed on the stone table of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Individually, Jake Adam York’s poems are elegies for individuals; collectively, they consider the violence of a racist culture and the determination to resist that racism. York follows Sun Ra, a Birmingham jazz musician whose response to racial violence was to secede from planet Earth, considers the testimony in the trial of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant for the murder of Emmet Till in 1955, and recreates events of Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Throughout the collection, an invasion of starlings imagesthe racial hatred and bloodshed. While the 1950s spawned violence, the movement in the early 1960s transformed the language of brutality and turned the violence against the violent, says York. So, the starlings, first produced by violence, become instruments of resistance. York’s collection responds to and participates inrecent movements to find and punish the perpetrators of the crimes that defined the civil rights movement. A Murmuration of Starlings participates in the search for justice, satisfaction, and closure.
In today's fast-food world, Christianity can seem outdated or archaic. The temptation becomes to pick up the pace and play the game. But Chris Smith and John Pattison invites us to leave franchise faith behind and enter the kingdom of God, where people know each other well and love one another as Christ loves the church.
On May 27th, 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart met a flirtatious little starling who sang (an improved version of!) the theme from his Piano Concerto Number 17 in G to him. Knowing a kindred spirit when he met one, Mozart wrote "That was wonderful" in his journal and took the bird home to be his pet. For three years Mozart and his family enjoyed the uniquely delightful company of the starling until one April morning when the bird passed away. In 2013, Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Crow Planet, rescued her own starling, Carmen, who has become a part of her family. In Mozart's Starling, Haupt explores the unlikely bond between one of history's most controversial characters and one of history's most notoriously disliked birds. Part natural history, part story, Mozart's Starling will delight readers as they learn about language, music, and the secret world of starlings.
Murmuration is a year's worth of emotions, anxious thoughts and panic attacks, each one a beating wing in the mind of the author. Fans are saying: "Beautiful inside and out", "Lovingly designed", "One of the best poetry books I've read so far." Murmuration is an attempt to create something beautiful from this chaos; to make sense of the things we dare not breathe to life. Focusing on loss, heartbreak, mental health, and the impact of isolation on a tired mind, these poems are the starlings that gather above the water. These pages are the hope that we can learn to heal; that the future can survive the past.
On a summer's day in 2009 Neyra Alarcon de Alba walks home with some friends in her Mexican town of Magdalena de Kino. But Neyra Alarcon de Alba never makes it home. Neyra Alarcon will not be seen alive again. Seven years later, on October 11, 2016, the body of a young woman, mutilated, raped, unidentifiable, is found in a Brooklyn New York warehouse. She is not the first victim. She will not be the last. For former FBI agent Ryker Chase, her death, like the death of a Mexican girl seven years earlier, will push him to the limits of his understanding, and his fear. Chase has inherited abilities that he never wanted, never sought: the talents of a Shadow Wolf ICE agent stretching well beyond the training of these Native American trackers who use traditional tracking techniques for Federal Law Enforcement agencies working in the West. But he has also inherited the ability to 'see' into shadows, and into that which cannot be seen, the arts of the dream catcher, the shadow arts of one who becomes, who tracks not only with one's head, but with one's heart. While Chase tries to hide from such knowledge and vision, he cannot hide forever. Not when there are 'Others' whose existence is beyond the everyday, shadow figures such as the 'Third Man', who toys with one such as Chase, who haunts him and taunts him, who may indeed be his own twin 'other'. Chase's world is a one in which the duality of good and evil collide, where one man is but a shadow of another, a world of Native American duality in which the dark cannot exist without light, and where a Shadow Wolf may indeed be once, and forever, shadow. In such a world some are sacrificed, and for one such as Chase, a glance in a mirror reveals the twin self looking over a shoulder, waiting.... there. Working in similar milieus to such films as 'Silence of the Lambs', 'The Usual Suspects', 'The Bone Collector' against a Cormac McCarthy like landscape, 'A Murmuration of Starlings' is the first novel of the 'The Shadow Wolf Chronicles', adapted from the television series developed by Greg Dinner in association with Content Film and Television in Los Angeles and London.
From award-winning author Liz Garton Scanlon and celebrated artist Frann Preston-Gannon comes a gorgeously illustrated, lyrical counting book that will have young readers’ imaginations taking flight. One dark bird is perched up high, with a view of the town and a taste of the sky. Then she’s joined by two more, then three, then four. Before long, there are hundreds of starlings dancing across the sky—and avoiding a hunting hawk with one of the most spectacular tricks in the animal kingdom. Then, when night comes, the starlings begin to depart, until finally there is just one dark bird perched way up high, with a view of the town and a taste of the sky.
Charlie Christmas, Ademar Zarkan, and Prometheus Stone are the best of America—united by war, scarred by displacement, and resolute in the face of the troubles that rip the nation apart over three decades. Christmas, a Somali translator with a split personality, and Zarkan, a Muslim sharpshooter who defies gender and religious constraints to graduate from West Point, are first brought together by Stone, a lapsed Jew and an Army captain, amidst war and famine in East Africa. Their ensuing journey—which takes them from the mean streets of Mogadishu to the high desert of West Texas, from the barren plains of Indian country to the rolling hills of Minnesota—is at turns tragic and uplifting. Charlie’s son, Amir, is the bookmark in their lives, and the struggle to raise him amid the predators of white supremacy and violent radicalism is their life’s work. With the help of Buck, the bomb-sniffing dog with a nose for danger, they prevail over Somali militias, pirates, white supremacists, and ISIS terrorists in a splintering world that has turned on itself like a serpent in the singularly obscene act of devouring its own tail. A sweeping novel that digs deep into the backstories of some of the beloved West Texas characters from Seventh Flag, Balman’s award-winning debut novel, Murmuration is a mesmerizing story of what it means to be American in the twenty-first century.
A Conspiracy of Ravens presents readers with a compendium of collective bird nouns from the distant and not-so-distant past. This book collects more than one hundred of the best and most imaginative expressions and illustrates them with charming woodcuts by the eighteenth-century artist and naturalist Thomas Bewick.
Murmuration presents a new Photoworks commission by acclaimed Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi for the Brighton Photo Biennial 2010, New Documents, curated by Martin Parr. Invited to make new work about Brighton, Kawauchi was immediately drawn to the spectacle of flocking starlings at Brighton Pier. Here during the winter months at dusk, the birds gather in tens of thousands, wheeling around to create a mesmerizing cloud called a 'murmuration'. Kawauchi is fascinated by the ephemeral nature of this phenomenon and, continuing with the theme of the flock, she has also trailed groups of people through the city. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Strange and Familiar: Three Views of Brighton at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 2 October – 14 November 2010. Limited edition.
