Seeds of Memory

Seeds of Memory
Author: J. Richard Jacobs
Publisher: Fiction4All and Double Dragon
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2021-07-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

SPACE ... once believed to be a vast and vacant void, has been found, in fact, to be filled with all sorts of things - things that roam freely and at random. Our little spaceship Earth is no longer as secure as we once thought it to be. There are clouds of dust and gas so hot that their mere passing would scour our little system of planets with a breath of death and destruction complete. Clouds so massive that just their passing could throw all our little planets from of their peaceful orbits into the deep cold of a sunless darkness and fling our star out and on its way to being one of the eternal roamers of our galaxy, or even throw it into an intergalactic journey to who-knows-where? Black holes; blazars; blasts of deadly radiation from nearby super-novae; stars; burned out hulks of stars; super-dense neutron stars; rocks (small or incredibly large), and a host of other things - none of them welcome visitors. IN THIS INCREDIBLE, SWEEPING SAGA across thousands of years and hundreds of light years we come face to face with our fears and deep prejudices. It is here, in SEEDS OF MEMORY, that we get an idea of what it means to be "HUMAN" and what "HUMAN" really means. It is here, in SEEDS OF MEMORY, that we are confronted with the need to know colliding head-on with reality. Are we, HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS, truly the only form that humans can take, and is our history the only history? Might there not be others, or others created out of the very stuff of life who are, after all, our brothers and sisters - kith and kin. In this story we find that the lines that divide have indistinct, fuzzy edges, and that we are the ones who make those divisions. Here we discover humanity at its magnificent best, its seething worst, and everything imaginable between, while we make an uncertain attempt to reunite two peoples separated by time and space...and other things... One of those unwelcome visitors has arrived and we are pitifully unprepared. This is a speculative look into a far-flung future disaster that could actually happen (and well might, someday) and how the human species reacts to it. It could even be said that it is a look at a future history - a history we might not be able to survive.

Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers

Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers
Author: Virginia D. Nazarea
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2005-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816544921

Farmers and gardeners have long appreciated a wide variety of plants and have nurtured them for meals, healing, and exchange. But diversity too often has been surrendered to monocultures of fields and spirits, predisposing much of modern agriculture to uniformity and, consequently, vulnerability. Today it is primarily at the individual level—such as growing and saving a strange old bean variety or a curious-looking gourd—that any lasting conservation actually takes place. As scientists grapple with the erosion of genetic diversity of crops and their wild relatives, old-timey farmers and gardeners continue to save, propagate, and pass on folk varieties and heirloom seeds. Virginia Nazarea focuses on the role of these seedsavers in the perpetuation of diversity. She thoughtfully examines the framework of scientific conservation and argues for the merits of everyday conservation—one that is beyond programmatic design. Whether considering small-scale rice and sweet potato farmers in the Philippines or participants in the Southern Seed Legacy and Introduced Germplasm from Vietnam in the American South, she explores roads not necessarily less traveled but certainly less recognized in the conservation of biodiversity. Through characters and stories that offer a wealth of insights about human nature and society, Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers helps readers more fully understand why biodiversity persists when there are so many pressures for it not to. The key, Nazarea explains, is in the sovereign spaces seedsavers inhabit and create, where memories counter a culture of forgetting and abandonment engendered by modernity. A book about theory as much as practice, it profiles these individuals, who march to their own beat in a world where diversity is increasingly devalued as the predictability of mass production becomes the norm. Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers offers a much-needed, scientifically researched perspective on the contribution of seedsaving that illustrates its critical significance to the preservation of both cultural knowledge and crop diversity around the world. It opens new conversations between anthropology and biology, and between researchers and practitioners, as it honors conservation as a way of life.

Preserving Our Roots

Preserving Our Roots
Author: John Coykendall
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-10-16
Genre: Gardening
ISBN: 0807170364

For over four decades, John Coykendall’s passion has been preserving the farm heritage of a small community in rural southeastern Louisiana. A Tennessee native and longtime master gardener at Blackberry Farm, Coykendall has become a celebrity in a growing movement that places a premium on farm-to-table cuisine with locally sourced, organic, and heirloom foods and flavors. While his work takes him around the world searching for seeds and the cultural knowledge of how to grow them, what inspires him most is his annual pilgrimage to Louisiana. Drawn to the Washington Parish area as a college student, Coykendall forged long-lasting friendships with local farmers and gardeners. Over the decades, he has recorded oral histories, recipes, tall tales, agricultural knowledge, and wisdom from generations past in more than eighty illustrated and handwritten journals. At the same time, he has unearthed and safeguarded rare varieties of food crops once grown in the area, then handed them back to the community. In Preserving Our Roots: My Journey to Save Seeds and Stories, Coykendall shares a wealth of materials collected in his journals, ensuring they are passed on to future generations. Organized by season, the book offers a narrative chronicle of Coykendall’s visits to Washington Parish since 1973. He highlights staple crops, agricultural practices, and favorite recipes from the families and friends who have hosted him. Accompanied by a rich selection of drawings, journal pages, and photographs—along with over forty recipes—Preserving Our Roots chronicles Coykendall’s passion for recording foods and narratives that capture the rhythms of daily life on farms, in kitchens, and across generations.

Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope

Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope
Author: Virginia D. Nazarea
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816599076

Food is more than simple sustenance. It feeds our minds as well as our bodies. It nurtures us emotionally as well as physically. It holds memories. In fact, one of the surprising consequences of globalization and urbanization is the expanding web of emotional attachments to farmland, to food growers, and to place. And there is growing affection, too, for home gardening and its “grow your own food” ethos. Without denying the gravity of the problems of feeding the earth’s population while conserving its natural resources, Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope reminds us that there are many positive movements and developments that demonstrate the power of opposition and optimism. This broad collection brings to the table a bag full of tools from anthropology, sociology, genetics, plant breeding, education, advocacy, and social activism. By design, multiple voices are included. They cross or straddle disciplinary, generational, national, and political borders. Contributors demonstrate the importance of cultural memory in the persistence of traditional or heirloom crops, as well as the agency exhibited by displaced and persecuted peoples in place-making and reconstructing nostalgic landscapes (including gardens from their homelands). Contributions explore local initiatives to save native and older seeds, the use of modern technologies to conserve heirloom plants, the bioconservation efforts of indigenous people, and how genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been successfully combated. Together they explore the conservation of biodiversity at different scales, from different perspectives, and with different theoretical and methodological approaches. Collectively, they demonstrate that there is reason for hope.

Seeds of Wisdom

Seeds of Wisdom
Author: Mendel Kalmenson
Publisher: Jewish Educational Media
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2013-10-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1932349006

Culled From JEM's acclaimed My Encounter with the Rebbe interviews, Seeds of Wisdom is a heartwarming collection of short stories and encounters between the Lubavitcher Rebbe and people who sought his counsel on a wide array of life's questions and challenges. Contained within these exchanges are profound life-lessons in relationships, parenting, leadership, faith, and personal well-being. This little book of wisdom has the power to enrich your life and help effect personal growth and meaningful living. "In Seeds of Wisdom Rabbi Mendel Kalmenson has assembled a wonderful series of stories about the Lubavitcher Rebbe, one of the great leaders and holy men of our time. Read it and you will be enthralled. This is true food for the soul." -Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks "I can't recall the last time I was as inspired by a 'Jewish' book as I was by Seeds Of Wisdom. The genius of it lies in its reduction, its distillation of complex ideas into immediate and potent language. Several of the vignettes gave me goose bumps, others brought me to tears. As with my own personal encounters with the Rebbe, I take away a greater sense of mission and purpose." -Peter Himmelman - Award winning musician and artist "Seeds of Wisdom is a valuable resource that makes many important points in a brief, memorable way." -Joseph Teluskin - Lecturer and author of Jewish Literacy and the Book of Jewish Values

Moveable Gardens

Moveable Gardens
Author: Virginia D. Nazarea
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 081654302X

Moveable Gardens explores how biodiversity and food can counter the alienation caused by displacement. By offering in-depth studies on a variety of regions, this volume carefully considers various forms of sanctuary making within communities, and seeks to address how carrying seeds, plants, and other traveling companions is an ongoing response to the grave conditions of displacement in today’s world. The destruction of homelands, fragmentation of habitats, and post-capitalist conditions of modernity are countered by thoughtful remembrance of tradition and the migration of seeds, which are embodied in gardening, cooking, and community building. Moveable Gardens highlights itineraries and sanctuaries in an era of massive dislocation, addressing concerns about finding comforting and familiar refuges in the Anthropocene. The worlds of marginalized individuals who live in impoverished rural communities, many Indigenous peoples, and refugees are constantly under threat of fracturing. Yet, in every case, there is resilience and regeneration as these individuals re-create their worlds through the foods, traditions, and plants they carry with them into their new realities. This volume offers a new understanding of the performances and routines of sociality in the face of daunting market forces and perilous climate transformations. These traditions sustained our ancestors, and they may suffice to secure a more meaningful, diverse future. By delving into the nature of nostalgia, burrowing into memory and knowledge, and embracing the specific wonders of each deeply rooted or newly displaced community, endlessly valuable ways of being and understanding can be preserved. Contributors: Guntra A. Aistara, Aida Curtis, Terese V. Gagnon, John Hartigan Jr., Tracey Heatherington, Taylor Hosmer, Hayden S. Kantor, Melanie Narciso, Virginia D. Nazarea, Emily F. Ramsey, Krishnendu Ray, David Sutton, James R. Veteto, Marc N. Williams

The Seed Keeper

The Seed Keeper
Author: Diane Wilson
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-03-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1571317325

A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakhóta family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most. Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhóta people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited. On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools. Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.

Memory Wall

Memory Wall
Author: Anthony Doerr
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2010-07-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 143918285X

In the wise and beautiful second collection from the acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling author of All the Light We Cannot See, and Cloud Cuckoo Land, "Doerr writes about the big questions, the imponderables, the major metaphysical dreads, and he does it fearlessly" (The New York Times Book Review). Set on four continents, Anthony Doerr's new stories are about memory, the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others. Every hour, says Doerr, all over the globe, an infinite number of memories disappear. Yet at the same time children, surveying territory that is entirely new to them, push back the darkness, form fresh memories, and remake the world. In the luminous and beautiful title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In "The River Nemunas," a teenage orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. "Village 113," winner of an O'Henry Prize, is about the building of the Three Gorges Dam and the seed keeper who guards the history of a village soon to be submerged. And in "Afterworld," the radiant, cathartic final story, a woman who escaped the Holocaust is haunted by visions of her childhood friends in Germany, yet finds solace in the tender ministrations of her grandson. Every story in Memory Wall is a reminder of the grandeur of life--of the mysterious beauty of seeds, of fossils, of sturgeon, of clouds, of radios, of leaves, of the breathtaking fortune of living in this universe. Doerr's language, his witness, his imagination, and his humanity are unparalleled in fiction today.

Dance with the Devil

Dance with the Devil
Author: Stanley Booth
Publisher: Random House (NY)
Total Pages: 404
Release: 1984
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780394534886

The Triumph of Seeds

The Triumph of Seeds
Author: Thor Hanson
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2015-03-24
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0465048722

As seen on PBS's American Spring LIVE, the award-winning author of Buzz and Feathers presents a natural and human history of seeds, the marvels of the plant kingdom. "The genius of Hanson's fascinating, inspiring, and entertaining book stems from the fact that it is not about how all kinds of things grow from seeds; it is about the seeds themselves." -- Mark Kurlansky, New York Times Book Review We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life: supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and pepper drove the Age of Discovery, coffee beans fueled the Enlightenment and cottonseed sparked the Industrial Revolution. Seeds are fundamental objects of beauty, evolutionary wonders, and simple fascinations. Yet, despite their importance, seeds are often seen as commonplace, their extraordinary natural and human histories overlooked. Thanks to this stunning new book, they can be overlooked no more. This is a book of knowledge, adventure, and wonder, spun by an award-winning writer with both the charm of a fireside story-teller and the hard-won expertise of a field biologist. A fascinating scientific adventure, it is essential reading for anyone who loves to see a plant grow.