Originally written in the early 1970s, As I Remember Them is based on Jeanne-Elise Olsens extraordinary recall of her childhood and youth spent in an isolated part of the Laurentians in the Lièvre River Valley in the early twentieth century. She recounts how the Church lifted the ban, but only on specific conditions, one of which was for the family to leave Quebec.
Long before vacationers discovered BC’s Sunshine Coast, the Sliammon, a Coast Salish people, called the region home. In this remarkable book, Sliammon elder Elsie Paul collaborates with a scholar, Paige Raibmon, and her granddaughter, Harmony Johnson, to tell her life story and the history of her people, in her own words and storytelling style. Raised by her grandparents who took her on their seasonal travels, Paul spent most of her childhood learning Sliammon ways, teachings, and stories and is one of the last surviving mother-tongue speakers of the Sliammon language. She shares this traditional knowledge with future generations in Written as I Remember It.
The rivers of the Texas Panhandle, the Canadian, and the forks of the Red break through the Cap Rock at the eastern edge of the Staked Plains. It’s rough, bleak country, with few trees and a great expanse of sky. Storms that form on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountains sweep through with nothing much to slow them down. And the small dusty towns that serve this vast ranchland cling to the waterways as they have for over a hundred years, since their early settlement. Their names aren’t well known now, but they were once focal points in a rugged country where buffalo hunters, trail drivers, outlaws, and ordinary folks alike passed through. Rufe LeFors was one such "ordinary" man. With his father and older brothers, he was among the first to settle this country, drawn to West Texas by tales of open land and good grass. His life story, set down near the end of his long and adventurous life, is the best sort of insider's history, the chronicle of a life lived fully amid the exciting events and rough landscape of the frontier's final years. Rufe LeFors recorded his story over the course of a decade, finishing up in 1941 in his eighty-first year. His memoirs span the period from the War between the States to the early twentieth century, when the Panhandle was still scarcely settled, a true frontier. In his time LeFors was trail driver, pony express rider, and rancher. He traveled for a year with Arrington's Texas Rangers, and he wore the badge of deputy sheriff in the wild west town of Old Mobeetie. He rode a fast horse after claims in the Cherokee Strip, spent time as a horse trader, and finally settled in Lawton, Oklahoma, where, after some twenty years as a deputy, he was elected to the office of sheriff. LeFors knew how to tell a story. Whether it is an account of an outlaw's capture or the rescue of a white girl from prairie fire by a Comanche brave, he weaves into his narrative all the color, drama, and character of the event. His version of the death of Billy the Kid adds another perspective to that much celebrated episode in western history. His encounters with Temple Houston, the governor's flamboyant son, rancher Charles Goodnight, and Ranger Captain Arrington add to our fund of knowledge about those legendary frontier figures. LeFors wanted to get the facts—as he remembered them—straight. With his sharp eye for texture and detail and keen ear for language and timing, he created a narrative that wonderfully captures the flavor of his life and exciting times.
What has happened to the lost art of memorising poems? Why do we no longer feel that it is necessary to know the most enduring, beautiful poems in the English language 'by heart'? In his introduction Ted Hughes explains how we can overcome the problem by using a memory system that becomes easier the more frequently it is practised. The collected 101 poems are both personal favourites and particularly well-suited to the method Hughes demonstrates. Spanning four centuries, ranging from Shakespeare and Keats through to Thomas Hardy and Seamus Heaney, By Heart offers the reader a 'mental gymnasium' in which the memory can be exercised and trained in the most pleasurable way. Some poems will be more of a challenge than others, but all will be treasured once they have become part of the memory bank. This edition is part of a series of anthologies edited by poets such as Don Paterson and Simon Armitage and features an attractive new design to complement an anthology of classic poems.
A mature, intelligent, everyday person, Dianne Stewart, has read "My Life As I Remember It" and "Time Tested Thinking, As It Seems to Me". Her succinct observation is: "I think both books are extremely valuable. One is the story of a man, his life, his ups and downs, and his abiding faith in an abiding God, the other, what this man has learned and experienced with that same God".
Leonard Szczesny was born in 1931 on the Polish-Russian border to a Polish family. Because in 1933 his father Josef was banished for five years of hard labor to Siberia and was not allowed to ever return to within two hundred kilometers of his village, Leonard’s travels started at an early age. In 1937, with his mother Antonina and his older brother Jan, he traveled east to rejoin his father at a new place of employment. World War II broke out in 1939, and by 1943 it became clear that the Russian Army was getting the upper hand. Josef, being an “unreliable element” because of his banishment, decided that his family would have a better chance of living a peaceful life in Poland. On the way, the family had the misfortune of falling into a German roundup providing free labor for the German war industry. The rest is history: forced labor camp, several displaced persons camps, work for American and British occupational forces, and finally emigration to the United States. At that moment fortune returned: job, school, marriage, home, children...and the chance to reflect on the past and a happy ending!
''As I Remember It'' is a fascinating account of daily activities of a family in the early 1900's. Esther grew up on the prairie of western Kansas. Having been born in 1914, she and her family suffered some of the growing pains of a new frontier. Hard work, perserverance, and humor saw them through. Her stories provide vivid insight into the pioneer activities of hog butchering, wheat threshing, and chicken and egg production. The humor shared with family and neighbors helped them endure the hard times. Esther tells of many incidents of helpful neighbors; a very necessary element for the survival of early settlers.
