Wild Card Quilt: The Ecology of Home (World As Home, The)

Book Description

Seventeen years after she'd left home "for good," Janisse Ray pointed her truck away from Montana and back to the small southern town where she was born. Wild Card Quilt is the story, by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, and ambitious, of the adventures of returning home. For Ray, it is a story of linking the ecology of people with the ecology of place — of recovering lost traditions as she works to restore the fractured ecosystem of her native South. Her story is filled with syrup boils, quilt making, alligator trapping, and the wonderful characters of a place where generations still succeed each other on the land. But her town is also in need of repair, physical and otherwise. Ray works to save her local school, sets up a writing group at the local hardware store, and struggles with whether she can be an adult in a childhood place.

Customer Reviews:

Making Peace.......2007-06-28

Wild Card Quilt is a follow-up to Ecology of a Cracker Childhood in which the author builds on prior relationships and revisits childhood from the perspective of an adult. She honors her parents without agreeing with them and is apparently honored and respected in return. Some old disagreements persist!
While raising her son as single parent she lives a life of simplicity. Home she finds has values differing from those she has developed.
Her love and appreciation for the vanishing habitats of south Georgia propel her to activism. Her deep seated need to write forms new diverse relationships.
Enjoying things she loves leads to romance and fulfillment in an unexpected place.
Come stroll the long leaf pine forest with Janisse Ray.

Wild Card Quilt : The Ecology of Home.......2006-07-06

Excellent,,,took you home and if you weren't from there you went with your imagination....

A Joyous Story of Community Building.......2005-08-12

"Somebody, I thought, has to fight to protect the ravaged places. If a place loses the ones who care, the ones who can make a difference, what kind of doom does that spell? If the Southerners who love the wild leave the South, well, what happens then?"
--Janisse Ray, in Wild Card Quilt

Sadly, the answer to Janisse Ray's earnest question can be seen all over, and not just in the South. Too often, "what happens" is rampant, fragmented, inadequately planned development, communities without community, places devoid of a sense of place. Her new book Wild Card Quilt chronicles her return to homeplace Baxley, Georgia, to reestablish family connections and create a sustainable life for herself and her son Silas. Her "experiment in rural community" is largely successful. That it is so is due to Ray herself. A less outgoing, less imaginative, less self-sufficient person would likely find a hamlet like Baxley too isolated, its often-parochial attitudes suffocating. Indeed, Ray does battle feelings of loneliness and futility, and these she shares eloquently. But more often she is hopeful, ardently forging associations with people who share her ideals, creating friendships that restore her sense of purpose and connectedness. She joins with other Baxley residents to save their small school, participates in the creation of a watchdog organization to protect the Altamaha River, advocates for the preservation of Moody Swamp, an ancient, old-growth forest of cypress and longleaf pine, and joins with several other aspiring authors to form a writers' group.

In all her endeavors, Ray adopts a stalwart but cooperative stance with those she seeks to persuade. She is nonjudgmental, preferring to inspire and connect, rather than to scold. This is an approach we should emulate in our own efforts to promote habitat conservation and restoration. However convinced we are of our own rectitude, we must not alienate people by being ideologically rigid or unnecessarily confrontational.
Central to the book is the notion that building human connections is not only important for our emotional health as individuals, but that these ties strengthen our communities and make them better, stronger, more pleasant places to live. The bonds we form in working on community projects helps us individually, as well as helping society collectively. I know this has been true for me, as I count as invaluable the opportunities for fellowship provided by my volunteer activities.

The gravity of these themes is lightened by Ray's obvious joy in life's simple pleasures, natural beauty, and wild creatures, and in her sweet and entertaining descriptions of the ways and characters of Baxley, like her chain-smoking, church-going Uncle Percy, and the stubbornly self-reliant photographer E.D. McCool, who lives in a bus and tootles around town on a riding lawnmower. She relates her experiences at a pork cook-off, a syrup-boiling, the local Martin Luther King Parade, and a night-time gator hunt with good humor that is often self-deprecating. The result is a book that is heartwarming and uplifting, especially to those who love nature and want to preserve it.

prophetic, poetic, passionate: Ray's ecology inspires.......2004-12-20

If Janisse Ray's first memoir, "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood," is an evocative reclamation of a treasured Southern ecological system, her sequel, "Wild Card Quilt" emerges as a moving, inspiring and passionate attempt to reclaim her adult life. Ray's poetic prose is part autobiography, part self-identification with place and part manifesto. Her writing soars with exquisite metaphor and astounding revelation. She is unapologetic in her defense of the longleaf pine ecosystem and convincing in her appeals for Americans to redefine the very nature of our national character. "Wild Card Quilt" required courage to write, and Ray more than met the challenge. Years from now, she will be recognized as instrumental to late twentieth-century ecology as Rachel Carson was some half-century earlier.

After having fled her restrictive and repressive childhood home in rural Georgia, Ray discovers herself adrift and alienated as an adult. A single mother of an inquisitive and sensitive son, her spiritual restlessness compels her to return to her grandmother's isolated shotgun cabin and reclaim her life. In so doing, she rediscovers her fervent, but latent, identification with the disappearing longleaf pine forests of the Southeast. As she had in "Cracker Childhood," Ray provides masterful descriptions of this endangered ecology, lavishing as much love on the richly interdependent plant and animal life as she does on the family and community with which she interlaces herself in Baxley, Georgia.

Firmly linking herself with those social critics of American life who decry our culture's obsession with consumption and lack of identification with nature, Ray agrees with Paul Gruchow's conclusion that "we raise our most capable rural children...to expect that as soon as possible they will leave." Against this diaspora, Ray launches numerous campaigns, not only to preserve the ecology of her home, but the social structure groaning under the pressures of eradication in the name of jobs, progress and consumption.

As moving as her political polemics are, Ray reserves her best writing in portraying her people. Likening her family to homemade pure cane syrup, Ray surmises, "It's sweetness that keeps people together. Sweetness. The sweetness of our tongues, of kind words, of praise." But not only that. It is also the "sweetness, too, of acts of imagination and love." Quiet, nearly invisible kin earn her respect. Her reclusive uncle Percy, "not a man to reach out...or...demand much from life," through Ray's characterization, gains enormous dignity from his modesty. Percy, who excels at attending church and mowing the lawn, is as "extreme in his quiescence as Hemingway had been in his ardor to eat life's marrow." Content to allow life to come to him, "Percy nibbled at the crust."

From her mother, whose labors produce the quilt which gives the memoir its title, arises a sense of beauty that fits with Ray's defense of rural life. Her mother's quilts originate from "necessity, using rags and torn clothes." To Ray, "the need for usefulness...produces objects of the greatest beauty." The adult Ray has a kinder, more forgiving understanding of her father's psychology. Never giving in to his rigidity, she forgives him, and in so doing, opens the door for his reconciliation with Ray's oldest sister, with whom he had been estranged for nearly two decades.

Towering above everything in "Wild Card Quilt" is Janisse Ray's unabashed sense of hope. This infectious optimism, infused with deep conviction and enormous compassion, may align itself with our nation's longstanding sense of hope and vision. As the author becomes increasingly integrated in her Baxley environment, as she becomes ever more passionate in her advocacy for the longleaf pine forests, as she plants her own taproot deep in the fertile soils of family love and community solidarity, she outlines not only a personal blueprint of redemption, but a national one as well.

Customer Reviews:

Super book.......2002-03-04

Great reference book! Gives you all the information you need to propagate--nurserymen to laymen.

A book by a pro for the professional propagator.......2002-01-23

I propagated woody plants as a sideline business for a number of years and considered this book THE source. For many species, specific concentrations for rooting hormones are specified. This is invaluable information since for many plants there is an optimal concentration and using a higher or lower concentration of reduces rooting success rates as well as root development.

Michael Dirr is the Absolute Expert in Plant Propagation.......2000-09-03

Dirr has done all the research and you reap all the rewards. His conclusions are backed up by many scientific studies by various individuals and groups. The first part gives a summary of the diferent propagation methods and the second part has very detailed data on specific species. I save hundreds of dollars each year by propagating by own southern magnolias, red tip photinas, and navel oranges. This is, by far, the best book on propagation out there!!

Woody Plant Propagation.......2000-04-19

Uncertain which manual would be best, the reviews on this book were so good that I selected it. I'd have to say it's the best all-around propagation manual I've seen for woody plants. The only problem: now I have not only detailed info on desired plant material, but also want to try SO many others!

This is the best book out there........1999-10-25

This is by far the best book out there on this subject. I have bought all the books on this subject and none can compare to this one. If you only want to buy one book on this subject this is the one.

Tissue Culture Techniques For Horticultural Crops

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Tissue Culture Techniques For Horticultural Crops
Kenneth C. Torres
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0442284659

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Tissue Culture Techniques for Horticultural Crops

Manufacturer: Van Nostrand Reinhold
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0870555367

Book Description

A passionate recounting of the natural history of the rise and fall of salmon in England, New England, and the Pacific Northwest--with recommendations for bringing the salmon back.

In coming to understand the natural and human forces shaping the rivers and mountains of the Pacific Northwest, geologist David Montgomery learned to see the evolution and near-extinction of the salmon as a story of changing landscapes. An integral part of the region's rivers and seas, the salmon that symbolize the Northwest's natural splendor are now endangered, either gone or threatened with extinction across much of their ancestral range. Montgomery shows how a succession of de facto historical experiments-first in the United Kingdom, then in New England, and now in the Pacific Northwest-followed a similar story in which overfishing and sweeping changes to the landscape rendered the world inhospitable to salmon. In King of Fish, Montgomery traces the human impacts on salmon over the last 1000 years and examines the implications for both salmon recovery efforts and the more general problem of human impacts on the natural world. What does it say for the long-term prospects of the world's endangered species if one of the most prosperous regions of the richest country on earth cannot accommodate its icon species? All too aware of the possible bleak outcome for the salmon, King of Fish concludes with provocative recommendations for reinventing the ways in which we make environmental decisions about land, water, and fish.

Customer Reviews:

Say Goodbye to Salmon.......2005-09-13

I read this book with great interest and I am saddened by what I learned. I was raised in a town on the Columbia River and as a young fisherman, heard stories of large historic Salmon runs described in near myth-like terms. Back then I was taught to blame the tribes, gill netters and other commercial fisherman for the diminished runs. If only the problem were that simple. As Montgomery clearly describes, through an interesting comparative analsis, Salmon runs have historically been driven into extinction, first in Europe, then England, then New England, and now the Pacific Northwest in more or less the same fashion. As the areas around native salmon waters became populated and developed, our society has made certain choices, economic v. environmental, which not surpisingly have nearly always favored the economic. As a result, salmon runs were decimated by the construction of dams, overfishing, pollution, misguided hatchery programs, the clearing and diking of streams, destruction of wetlands, logging practices, and simply by population growth and development, which Montgomery describes as a death by a thousand cuts. Presently, salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest are at just 6-7% of their historical numbers. As the region's population is expected to double within this generation, conditions will likely only get worse. While Montgomery identifies steps than can be taken to revive these runs, it seems doubtful there is enough public sentiment or political will to effect these changes. If anything, this books is a sad commentary on our society's ability to manage its resources. Salmon, which are a symbol of the great Pacific Northwest, will soon be gone for good.

Capitalism can't protect the Salmon.......2004-05-22

Dr. Montgomery shows that if the toxic and human waste poured into the rivers of the industrial revolution did not poison Salmon, the incipient capitalist institution of commercial fishing would swallow most of them.. Montgomery quotes records from the holder of fishing rights on a specific part of the Thames river. The records of this particular holder shows he caught 66 salmon in 1801, 18 in 1812 and only 2 in 1821....by the 1960's, the annual salmon catch of England and Wales was a quarter of that a century earlier. He quotes an account of MP Robert Wallace about parliament blocking effective salmon protection laws at the behest of the commercial fishing industry, dam operators, etc.

He quotes accounts from the early 19th century including from Henry David Thoreau about the severe depletion of salmon stocks in Northeast U.S. rivers caused by the disruption of salmon spawning beds by the transportion of boats and logs down the river, dams, factory poisons and so on.

Salmon stocks continued to decline to near extinction in Eastern U.S. waters. The Danish government agreed to ban its fisherman from engaging in their highly destructive open ocean fishing off the coast of Greenland, where salmon from Britain, the U.S, and Canada often converge for their sojourns in the Ocean, in 1972. However Danes continued to fish heavily near the Greenland shore, and used vessels under other nation's flags to circumvent their salmon catch quota under the 1972 agreement.

Montgomery shows how salmon have been sacrificed since the Great Depression in favor of the dams which have provided water and electricity in the Eastern Pacific Northwest from the Snake and Colombia Rivers. In 1937, U.S. fisheries commissioner Franklin Bell let it be known that he wasn't going to strain himself too much on behalf of the Salmon. "Aside from blind restriction" of commercial fishing, he explained, "the protection of individual runs menaced by virtual extinction must be left to chance."

Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest thrived on salmon for subsistence, and to preserve the run, would commonly allow half of the run to pass through its nets. But with the coming of commercial fishing dominated by whites, Indian livelihood was wiped out. They could not compete in commercial fishing, lacking the wealth to purchase the sophisticated boats and nets increasingly becoming common. Indians became a racist scapegoat for the depletion of salmon stocks. He notes He notes though that state records that the entire Indian fishing catch from 1935 to 1950 was less than the total commercial catch during a typical year.

Washington State had always claimed that on traditional Indian fishing grounds based on treaties made regarding Colombian basin rivers in the 1850's, Indians merely had the same rights as whites to exploit salmon. But in 1970, federal district court judge George Boldt ruled that the treaties actually reserved for Indians half of the annual salmon supply. In 1975, the Supreme Court upheld Boldt's decision. In 1980, Federal Judge William Orrick declared that under the old treaties, maintaining decent habitat for salmon spawning fell to Washington state. Shortly thereafter a three-judge panel of the 9th circuit overturned the decision. The issue of maintaining the habitat has not been resolved. He points out that native Americans have not been given "special rights" in fishing, as white fisherman and the demagogues inflaming them have claimed but the treaties, signed as they were under pressure, were grants by the Indians to the White man on the Indian's land. Not grants by the white man to the Indian.

, Hatcheries were promoted as the catchall solution to salmon shortages. Huge investments were made in this new technology by Washington and Oregon governments beginning the late 19th century. However, writes Montgomery, in the long term, hatcheries have clearly failed. Salmon cannot simply adapt to any stream or river. They seem genetically programmed to operate in limited regions. Hatcheries salmon are selected from a very limited gene pool i.e. lack of genetic diversity and can produce defective offspring with their wild brethren. The hatchery salmon are found to be much more aggressive than their wild counterparts in eating up the food supply, thus making the wild ones lose out in the survival of the fittest. In particular hatchery fish, can introduce deadly diseases to their wild brethren. In the mid-70's a parasite from hatchery fish wiped out restored wild salmon stocks in Norwegian rivers.
By the early 1990's, while the Colombia river held an estimated 11 to 16 million salmon before the arrival of Europeans, by then it had dwindled to around 2 million wild fish. Yet the number of hatchery fish in the river was estimated at the time to be around a hundred million.

Likewise, on the East coast, salmon produced in "farms" i.e. maintained in cages at sea, sometimes accounted for the majority of spawning salmon in a river. An estimate of the National Research Council declares that 180,000 fish a year escape from their farms in Maine. They spread disease to wild salmon and mate with them, creating large numbers of genetically limited salmon. According to Montgomery, those 180,000 fish are ten times the number of wild salmon left in New England. In Europe, he notes, the amount of farm salmon being produced was 100 times the catch of wild salmon.

He advocates strictly enforced moratoriums on fishing, increased preservations of wetlands to allow for the creation of flood produced salmon-friendly side-channels, strictly enforced regulations on placing passageways for salmon in dams, regulations to prevent salmon waterways from being polluted and to make sure that salmon do not end up as carcasses on farmland after being swallowed through irrigation pumps. The economic actors involved continue to block serious efforts to protect the salmon as they always have. He notes how the Bush administration has blocked efforts to address over-fishing.

How to Save Salmon - Lessons from History.......2004-03-20

Montgomery's book is centered on the notion that we are failing to learn from history when it comes to the Pacific salmon crisis. In England, eastern North America, and now the Pacific Northwest, human actions that inevitably destroy the "king of fish" have been repeated. Overfishing, blocking salmon from their spawning habitat, and causing the deterioration of habitat quality through pollution, land clearing, and simplification of the river are the culprits. Montgomery also tells why hatcheries are not the solution and never have been. He closes with a clear and, to me, indisputable analysis of what we must do to preserve and recover this most amazing of creatures. The book is quite accessible to a layperson; you don't need a scientific background, or even any knowledge of the problems facing Pacific salmon, in order to enjoy and learn from the book.

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Pacific Salmon
Childerhose
Manufacturer: Hounslow Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0888943423

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Pacific Salmon and Steelhead Trout
R. J. Childerhose
Manufacturer: Univ of Washington Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0295958669

Pacific Salmon from Egg to Exit: From Egg to Exit

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Pacific Salmon from Egg to Exit: From Egg to Exit
Gordon Bell
Manufacturer: Hancock House Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0888393792

Field Guide to the Pacific Salmon (Adopt-a-Stream Foundation)

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OK intro but it's only a beginning.
Short & Sweet

Field Guide to the Pacific Salmon (Adopt-a-Stream Foundation)
Adopt-a-Stream Foundation
Manufacturer: Sasquatch Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Field Identification of Coastal Juvenile Salmonids
The Behavior And Ecology Of Pacific Salmon And Trout
Atlas of Pacific Salmon: The First Map-Based Status Assessment of Salmon in the North Pacific

ASIN: 0912365641

Book Description

This informative field guide allows the reader to become familiar with the seven species of Pacific salmon and their habitats. It traces the life cycle of the salmon in their epic journey from stream to ocean and home again, and shows how pollution and human encroachment threaten the existence of this once-abundant fish. Proceeds from this book help support Adopt-A-Stream Foundation.

Customer Reviews:

OK intro but it's only a beginning........2007-03-02

This book provides a very quick and general overview of salmon. It briefly touches on each species and the issues that they face. Good intro to the fish but definitely requires follow up.

Good tables that identify the habitat and spawning needs of each species.
Good life cycle illustration.

I agree that it would be good for a young audience.

Short & Sweet.......2000-03-26

I enjoyed this book as it was concise and full of rich detail. A highlight is that it compares and contrasts the many salmon species. It is an excellent resource for a classroom!

Product Description

Thin, stapled booklet with illustrated wraps.

Ah-yo-ka, daughter of Sequoya (Real people)

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Ah-yo-ka, daughter of Sequoya (Real people)
Catherine Cate Coblentz
Manufacturer: California State Dept. of Education
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

REAL PEOPLE Set 3, Daniel Boone, Zebulous Pike, Ah-yo-ka and Sequoya, John Jacob Astor, Rufus Putnam, Narcissa Whitman

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REAL PEOPLE Set 3, Daniel Boone, Zebulous Pike, Ah-yo-ka and Sequoya, John Jacob Astor, Rufus Putnam, Narcissa Whitman
Frances, Director of Biographies Cavanah
Manufacturer: Row, Peterson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000VB5PMQ

Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women

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Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195109252

Book Description

Unlike most anthologies that present a single story from many writers, this volume offers an in-depth sampling of two or three stories by a select number of both famous and emergent Native women writers. Here you will find much-loved stories (many made easily accessible for the first time) and vibrant new stories by such well-known contemporary Native American writers as Paula Gunn Allen, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, and Leslie Marmon Silko as well as the fresh voices of emergent writers such as Reid Gomez and Beth Piatote. Although diverse in style, language, and tone, all of these stories are reckonings with the brutal history of colonization and its ongoing consequences: they reveal Native epistemologies; testify to historic wrongs; and insist upon an accounting. A reckoning requires diving inward and resurfacing with new insights. These stories share an understanding of Native women's lives in their various modes of loss and struggle, resistance and acceptance, and rage and compassion, ultimately highlighting the individual and collective will to endure. These contemporary stories reflect cycles--mythic cycles, life cycles, cycles of resistance, and healing cycles--that insure Native survival. These are the stories told and retold by Native women who refuse to be silenced. Their collection celebrates survival and provides readers with an essential new resource.

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Sequoya
Ruby Lorraine Radford
Manufacturer: Putnam Pub Group Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
ASIN: 0399605754

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Sequoya
Radford
Manufacturer: G. P. Putnams Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JC9E1K

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Sequoya 1925
Yearbook
Manufacturer: Sequoya
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000VGBGQU

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Sequoya,
Catherine Cate Coblentz
Manufacturer: Longmans, Green and Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Sequoya: Native American Scholar (Spirit of America Our People)

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Sequoyah: inventor of the Cherokee syllabary

Sequoya: Native American Scholar (Spirit of America Our People)
C. Ann Fitterer
Manufacturer: Child's World
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 156766167X

Book Description

A brief introduction to the life of the Cherokee Indian who created a method for his people to write and read their own language.

Customer Reviews:

Sequoyah: inventor of the Cherokee syllabary.......2003-10-27

"Sequoyah: Native American Scholar" is the story of the Cherokee Indian who gave his people the gift of reading and writing in their own Cherokee language. Historians believe that in 1847 the Austrian scientist Stephen Endlicher named the great California redwood trees "Sequoia sempervirens" as a tribute to Sequoyah, and in 1890 the United States named a national park after him as well, with a national forest established in his honor in 1908. This is rather ironic since during in 1838-1839 the U.S. Army forced some 17,000 Cherokees, including Sequoyah, to move far west of their native land to what is now Oklahoma. Thousands of Cherokee died along what is now the infamous "Trail of Tears." But then young readers who pick up this Our People volume are probably already well aware that the treatment of Native Americans is not exactly a shining part of American history.

Historians believe that Sequoyah was part Indian and part white, the son of an important woman from a noble Cherokee family and a white trader named Nathaniel Gist born in what is now Tennessee and named Sogwali (Sequoyah was the name given to him by missionaries, and as is often the case in such circumstances there are numerous variant spellings of the name). However, regardless of his racial background, what is fascinating about Sequoyah is that he invented a syllabary for the language of his people. The chapter C. Ann Fitterer devotes to exactly how he did this is the most fascinating in this juvenile biography, as is the fact Sequoyah never learned to speak, read, or write English. This probably explains why what Sequoyah created for the Cherokee language was not an alphabet, but a syllabary, consisting of the 86 syllables he identified. Certainly every young student who has had to grasp the fact that the same letter can represent different sounds, will recognize that this might be a better approach than what they have to deal with in English.

An early example of Sequoyah's syllabary is provided in the book, along with both historic paintings and etchings from his life and more contemporary photographs of the land and customs of the Cherokee. Fitterer does provide all the standard biographical information about Sequoyah's life and death, but it is the American scholar's work in providing a written language for his people that is this volume's chief lesson. This is why young readers will appreciate the book's final irony: that officials in Washington, D.C., learned about Sequoyah's death in a letter from an Indian scout that was written in Cherokee using Sequoyah's symbols.

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