A Hunter's Field Notes

A Hunter's Field Notes
Author: Jay Houston
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0736943668

Tapping into the market of more than 12 million hunters in the United States alone, avid sportsmen Jay Houston and Roger Medley team up to encourage men to open their hearts and share their values, beliefs, and wisdom with their families. Through stories of hunting and outdoor adventures, they reveal the significance of a man's legacy and offer thought-provoking questions to help him start journaling: How do the traits of bull elk relate to walking with Christ? Hunting prayers center on goals, but is that the best approach? How can hunting skills draw us closer to God? Readers will also discover specifics for creating legacies: using birthday cards to highlight qualities they admire jotting down insights in the margins of hunting books to give as gifts teaching hunting lore while enjoying a venison feast Jay and Roger urge men to grow spiritually, make their faith known, and pass on their knowledge about life and hunting to the generations to come.

Encounters with Witchcraft

Encounters with Witchcraft
Author: Norman N. Miller
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2012-04-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1438443595

Encounters with Witchcraft is a personal story of a young man's fascination with African witchcraft discovered first in a trek across East Africa and the Congo. The story unfolds over four decades during the author's long residence in and many trips to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. As a field researcher he learns from villagers what it is like to live with witches, and how witches are seen through African eyes. His teachers are healers, cult leaders, witch-hunters and self-proclaimed "witches" as well as policemen, politicians and judges. A key figure is Mohammadi Lupanda, a frail village woman whose only child has died years before. In her dreams, however, she believes the little girl is not dead, but only lost in the fields. Mohammadi is discovered wandering at night, wailing and calling out for the child. Her neighbors are terror-stricken and she is quickly brought to a village trial and banished as a witch. The author is able to watch and listen to the proceedings and later investigate the deeper story. He discovers mysteries about Mohammadi that are only solved when he returns to the village three decades later. Today, witch-hunting and witchcraft-related crimes are found in more than seventy developing countries. Epidemics of violence against alleged witches, mainly women, but including elders of both genders, and even children is on the increase in some parts of the world. Witchcraft beliefs may lie behind vigilante murders, political assassinations, revenge killings and commercial murders for human body parts. Through African voices the author addresses key questions. Do witchcraft powers exist? Why does witchcraft persist? What are its historic roots? Why is witchcraft-based violence so often found within families? Does witchcraft serve as a hidden legal and political system, a mafia-like under-government? The author holds up a mirror for us to think about religious beliefs in our own experience that rely heavily on myth and superstition.

Field Notes

Field Notes
Author: Barry Lopez
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2011-09-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307806553

In this collection of twelve stories, Barry Lopez—the National Book Award–winning author of Arctic Dreams and one of our most admired writers—evokes the longing we feel for beauty in our relationships with one another, with the past, and with nature. An anthropologist traveling with an aboriginal people finds that, because of his aggressive desire to understand them, they remain always disturbingly unknowable. A successful financial consultant, failing to discover his roots in Africa, jogs from Connecticut to the Pacific Ocean in order to forge an indigenous connection to the American landscape. A paleontologist is haunted by visions of wildlife in a vacant lot in Manhattan. In simple, crystalline prose, Lopez evokes a sense of the magic and marvelous strangeness of the world, and a deep compassion for the human predicament.

Collecting Evolution

Collecting Evolution
Author: Matthew J. James
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2017-03-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0199354626

In 1905, eight men from the California Academy of Sciences set sail from San Francisco for a scientific collection expedition in the Galapagos Islands, and by the time they were finished in 1906, they had completed one of the most important expeditions in the history of both evolutionary and conservation science. These scientists collected over 78,000 specimens during their time on the islands, validating the work of Charles Darwin and laying the groundwork for foundational evolution texts like Darwin's Finches. Despite its significance, almost nothing has been written on this voyage, lost amongst discussion of Darwin's trip on the Beagle and the writing of David Lack. In Collecting Evolution, author Matthew James finally tells the story of the 1905 Galapagos expedition. James follows these eight young men aboard the Academy to the Galapagos and back, and reveals the reasons behind the groundbreaking success they had. A current Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, James uses his access to unpublished writings and photographs to provide unprecedented insight into the expedition. We learn the voyagers' personal stories, and how, for all the scientific progress that was made, just as much intense personal drama unfolded on the trip. This book shares a watershed moment in scientific history, crossed with a maritime adventure. There are four tangential suicides and controversies over credit and fame. Collecting Evolution also explores the personal lives and scientific context that preceded this voyage, including what brought Darwin to the Galapagos on the Beagle voyage seventy years earlier. James discusses how these men thought of themselves as "collectors" before they thought of themselves as scientists, and the implications this had on their approach and their results. In the end, the voyage of the Academy proved to be crucial in the development of evolutionary science as we know it. It is the longest expedition in Galapagos history, and played a critical role in cementing Darwin's legacy. Collecting Evolution brings this extraordinary story of eight scientists and their journey to life.

Hunting Nature

Hunting Nature
Author: Thomas P. Hodge
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501750852

In Hunting Nature, Thomas P. Hodge explores Ivan Turgenev's relationship to nature through his conception, description, and practice of hunting—the most unquenchable passion of his life. Informed by an ecocritical perspective, Hodge takes an approach that is equal parts interpretive and documentarian, grounding his observations thoroughly in Russian cultural and linguistic context and a wide range of Turgenev's fiction, poetry, correspondence, and other writings. Included within the book are some of Turgenev's important writings on nature—never previously translated into English. Turgenev, who is traditionally identified as a chronicler of Russia's ideological struggles, is presented in Hunting Nature as an expert naturalist whose intimate knowledge of flora and fauna deeply informed his view of philosophy, politics, and the role of literature in society. Ultimately, Hodge argues that we stand to learn a great deal about Turgenev's thought and complex literary technique when we read him in both cultural and environmental contexts. Hodge details how Turgenev remains mindful of the way textual detail is wedded to the organic world—the priroda that he observed, and ached for, more keenly than perhaps any other Russian writer.

Archaeology and Environment in the Scoresby Sund Fjord

Archaeology and Environment in the Scoresby Sund Fjord
Author: Hanne Tuborg Sandell
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
Total Pages: 156
Release: 1991
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9788763512084

In 1983, during archaeological investigations of Jameson Land in Northeast Greenland, Kalaallit Nunaata Katersugaasivia (Grønlands Landsmuseum) excavated a winter dwelling from the last Thule Eskimo settlement in that area. The results of the excavation are the subject of this book, where they are analysed and presented from an ethno-archaeological point of view. The introductory section describes the natural conditions and living resources of the area, and is followed by a short historical/archaeological review of Northeast Greenland. Next, the results of the excavation are presented with a description of the finds, and the archaeological data is evaluated in relation to previous material from Northeast Greenland. This is followed by a section on the material and cultural development and adjustments made by the present population of the Scoresby Sund area, as regards ecology and resources. An ethno-archaeological analysis is undertaken on the basis of the ethnological material presented, and theories put forward to describe patterns of resource exploitation, mobility, seasonal movements etc. for the people living in the last Thule culture in the Scoresby Sund area. Opportunities for contact with European Whalers and other cultural developments are also discussed.

The Fur Trade Revisited

The Fur Trade Revisited
Author: Jo-Anne Fisk
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 571
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0870139126

The Fur Trade Revisited is a collection of twenty-eight essays selected from the more than fifty presentations made at the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference held on Mackinac Island, Michigan, in the fall of 1991. Essays contained in this important new interpretive work focus on the history, archaeology, and literature of a fascinating, growing area of scholarly investigation. Underscoring the work's multifaceted approach is an introductory essay by Lily McAuley titled "Memories of a Trapper's Daughter." This vivid and compelling account of the fur-trade life sets a level of quality for what follows. Part one of The Fur Trade Revisited discusses eighteenth-century fur trade intersections with European markets. The essays in part two examine Native people and the strategies they employed to meet demands placed on them by the market for furs. Part three examines the origins, motives, and careers of those who actually participated in the fur trade. Part four focuses attention on the indigenous fur-trade culture and subsequent archaeology in the area around Mackinac Island, Michigan, while part five contains studies focusing on the fur-trade culture in other parts of North America. Part six assesses the fur trade after 1870 and part seven contains evaluations of the critical historical and literary interpretations prevalent in fur-trade scholarship.