If you like your prophecies pin sharp then look away now. The 16th century celebrity seer Nostradamus excelled at the exact opposite, couching his predictions in terms so vague as to be largely meaningless. This has not, however, prevented his soothsayings attracting enormous and unending interest, and his book – Les Propheties – has rarely been out of print since it was first published 460 years ago. Uniquely, for a renaissance augur, the writings of Nostradamus are perhaps as popular today as they were four and a half centuries ago.
The post Look away now: The prophecies of Nostradamus appeared first on OUPblog.
Fire, Jackie French (author), Bruce Whatley (illus.), Scholastic Press, 2014. Harsh weather conditions are terrifying enough at the best of times, but what about when Mother Nature plays a hand in the wild and extreme that gamble with actual lives? Award-winning author and Australian Laureate, Jackie French, together with the unequivocally talented illustrator, Bruce […]
Napoli, Donna Jo. 2014. Storm. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Storm, told in first person, present tense prose, presents the story of the biblical flood through the eyes of 16-year-old Sebah, an unlikely stowaway aboard Noah's massive ark.
The story unfolds in chapters that correspond with the biblical timeline - 40 days of rain, 150 days for the waters to recede, 10 months until the mountains become visible, 40 days until the release of a bird, etc.
(All can be found in the 7th and 8th chapters of Genesis.)
After chronicling Sebah's three week struggle to survive the deluge with her companion Aban, the chapter titled, "Day 22," ends,
It's another creature. Like the first, but larger. And obviously male. He perches in a round hole high in the side of the ship. There is a line of such holes. And I passed another line below as I climbed.
A whole ship of these creatures.
I think of letting go, disappearing into the sea. I let loose one hand and look down. The sea is far below. I feel the energy seep from me. It would be so easy to just give up.
...
The creature behind me nudges my dangling hand.
I reach for the male's hand, and I am half pulled, half shoved up through the hole and into the ship.
Ms. Napoli clearly put an enormous amount of thought into the logistics of preparing for a massive exodus of animals with little or no possibility of resupply for more than a year. She details the grueling work of the voyage. While Sebah struggles to remain hidden and survive in the enclosure of the
bonobos, Noah and his family have a huge responsibility to the ark's inhabitants. The animals must be secure from each other, their enclosures must be cleaned, they must be fed, they must have fresh water. Their survival is imperative. The family collects rainwater, they dry and ration supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables for the ark's herbivores, they fish to obtain fresh food for the carnivores. The family's nerves grow frayed under the stress. They begin to argue and turn against one another. The hidden Sebah sees much,
"Respect!" Noah claps his hands above his head, and dust flies through the dim light. "And haven't you learned arguing gets us nowhere?" He takes his ax back from Ham. "The bottom deck stinks. I have to breathe shallow to stand going down there. Everyone has to help Japheth and me clean it out. Today! Let our wives feed and water the animals of this deck and the top —while we shovel waste. Noah goes up the ladder with Japheth at his heels.
How you will perceive this book will depend greatly upon how you perceive the biblical story of the great flood. Arguments could be made for classification as historical fiction, alternative history, survival fiction, dystopian fiction, or fantasy. However you choose to view the book, it cannot be denied that it is a thought-provoking look at the nature of humans and animals, of loss and love, of despair and hope.
An Author's Note, Timeline from Genesis Verses, and Bibliography are included. Visit the author's website
http://www.donnajonapoli.com/ya.html#STORM to read an excerpt.
(I'm not a Russell Crowe fan, but now I think that I might want to watch the movie,
Noah, just to see another perspective.)
(My copy of the book was provided by the publisher, and was an Advance Reader Copy)
BookTour.com co-founder Kevin Smokler has been named vice president of marketing at Byliner.
Smokler will be responsible for overseeing marketing initiatives, social media projects, and community management at the new nonfiction site. Smokler previously served as CEO of BookTour.com. That site offers tools and services for authors to promote their books and for readers to have access to the authors.
Smokler had this statement in the press release: “Four of my great loves–reading, journalism, publishing and technology–all showed up in one job. How often does that happen?”
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
As this is women’s history month, I want to draw attention to the contributions of Pearl Buck, an American author much read during her lifetime but largely forgotten in recent decades. I found reading one of her biographies, Pearl Buck in China: Journey to the Good Earth, by Hilary Spurling, very worthwhile.
An Unbelievably Interesting Life. Born in 1892 in America as Pearl Sydenstricker, she spent most of her childhood in China because her parents were Christian missionaries there. As a little girl, she played with Chinese peasant children and was more fluent in Chinese than in English. She loved to attend Chinese funerals because there was always a party afterward where she could eat treats and listen to the other guests talk and have fun. She spent much time with her Chinese nurse, hearing traditional Chinese stories as well as village gossip. She liked to overhear conversations among poor Chinese women complaining about their hard lives and how they were mistreated by men.
Pearl learned at an early age about foot-binding and female infanticide. She worried that she would never be married because her feet were not bound. Frequently, the young Pearl found human bones on the ground, the residue of dead female infants left outside for the dogs. She would gather their bones, sticking some in existing graves and digging small graves for the others. The Chinese neighbors thought that she was crazy for doing that.
1 Comments on Pearl Buck in China, last added: 3/22/2011
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on 3/15/2011
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| Nikkei 225 Stock Index Board |
When I was in school, I always had trouble understanding the time line of history. It wasn’t until college that I could piece together time lines between nations and continents. You know how I did it? I looked at economies, how industries developed, what a nation traded, and with whom it was trading. A developing time line, say from farm to industry, helps me understand not only the evolution of a nation’s history, but also its situation today.
Often, in secondary education, economics and economic systems are taught separately from history, civics, and current affairs. Yet, concepts in economics can sometimes best explain a nation’s moment in history, the reason the nation has the alliances it does, and the type of government structure that exists in it. Economic systems can be a good way to introduce history, politics, dissect current affairs, and even play around with predicting future outcomes in a fun, discussion-oriented class setting.
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| Tsunami damage in Japan |
This week, consider Japan. Given the natural disasters that are in the news, maybe a glimpse into Japan’s economic history can help students connect the current events of today with the country and people involved. This might be a good way to bring some background to the news article you read for class, or just as added interest-inspiring material.
Since 1990, Japan’s economy has been rather stagnant. Slow growth, coupled with a low birth rate meant the recession of 2008 was a double blow to the just-recovering economy. The Japanese were probably pretty fed up. Which could be a reason why since 2000, Japan has had seven prime ministers, some staying in power for mere months before being ousted and replaced by someone else. Someone who, people
In mid-April 2010, the Icelandic volcano called Eyjafjallajokull erupted and erupted again, sending thick clouds of volcanic ash and rock into the atmosphere. Throughout the British Isles and much of northern and western Europe, air travel was deemed unsafe and airports were closed for an indefinite period, which ultimately lasted six days. Among the hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded far from home, and becoming increasingly desperate, were 40,000 Americans in Britain. I was one of them. Having completed the business for which I had gone to the UK, I devoted myself to keeping up with my AMSCO duties via iPhone, while I searched for an escape route that would enable me to reach home. The inability of any official source to indicate how long the crisis would last (an 1821 eruption of the same volcano lasted 2 years!) contributed to a terrible feeling of being trapped.
An amusing aspect of the crisis, which I did not contemplate until I had returned home, was the difficulty media personnel, and almost everyone else who was not Icelandic, had in pronouncing the name of the volcano. As one who was raised in the Bensonhurst-B
If you are unfortunate enough to get into a car accident, it’s common for the insurance adjuster to ask you: “On a scale of one to ten, how hard would you rate the impact?” On this rainy morning, I am one such unlucky person who hears it, and the question bothers me immediately. I consider asking her whether she means on a linear scale or on a logarithmic scale.
This is probably
hyperbole on my part. Grand things, chaotic things, are measured on logarithmic scales. Geologists describe earthquakes to laypeople using the
Richter scale. The recent quake in Chile measured
8.8. The devastating earthquake earlier this year that hit Port-au-Prince measured
7.0. Since the numbers that depict logarithmic measurements describe exponents, it’s not just nearly two earthquake-units stronger. In fact, this means that Chile’s quake was
more than 63 times as strong as Haiti’s.
In measuring human perception, scientists frequently use logarithmic scales. The measurement of acidity, pH, uses a logarithmic scale. So does the measurement of loud noises, in decibels. So does the scientific measurement of star brightness, or stellar magnitude. And entropy.
And as scientists describe earthquakes and
entropy with logarithmic scales, I too wish to use them to describe things like pain, frustration, confusion, deliciousness. Isn’t a 7 on a scale of heartbreak ten times worse than a 6? Would you not expect a 9-out-of-10 fudge brownie to taste 100 times better than its 7-out-of-10 rival?
For another example, take me, standing in a stinging rain with a T-boned car, late for an appointment. My frustration could be considered a 5, which is easily 100 times worse than yesterday’s index finger paper cut, a 3 or less. How can I accurately convey my perception of the impact of this accident?
I pause to tell myself that this measurement, even in the small scheme of fixing my vehicle, is the least crucial. Estimation is okay. Estimation is probably preferred. I relax my desire for scientific accuracy. I bite my tongue, and I answer with as much conviction as I can muster, “between a five and six, I’d say,” and hope that somehow, through the formalities of insurance adjustment, despite the crisis of measurement I’ve manufactured in my head at this moment of stress, Lisa from Nationwide is truly on my side, and will know what I mean.
by Erin Luhks
It's 1965 in New Orleans. Seven-year old Kenny and his six-year old sister Allison build a tree house in their back yard. The tree house becomes their fort and they become king and queen. In it they play without invasion from grownups; they enjoy the hot summers and sip limonade under the branches to escape the heat... nothing can lure them down, not even delicious peanut butter and sliced banana sandwiches.
All is fine until one terrible day when a monster attacks them: Hurricane Betsy. Together with their parents, Kenny and Allison must evacuate immediately. Kenny is afraid for his tree house, so before they go to the shelter, he gets his tools and puts some extra nails into the boards. Then they stay in the shelter until it's safe to go back home. However, nothing prepares the children to what they see when they get back home...
Years pass and the story moves to the present, where Kenny, now a grown man, builds another tree house, this time for his sons.
Interesting piece. I have read that Buck's unconventional writing style can be attributed the fact that she was, in a way, writing in Chinese--a Chinese writer writing in English.