Beautiful Photographs Research Articles

Cultivating Community: Women and Agricultural Fairs in Ontario

Cultivating Community is a fascinating exploration of an understudied area of Canadian history. Nurse masterfully utilizes a plethora of archival and private materials in order to tell the century-long story of women's participation in local agricultural fairs in southern Ontario. This book offers an engaging interplay of macro and micro history, telling a broader history of women's movements and nationalism in Canada, while also offering colorful snapshots of many individual women's stories. The example of a woman cheating in the honey jarring competition by dyeing kerosene to look like the purest honey represents the type of colorful anecdote that brings this history to life. Nurse's work inspires the reader to look into their own local and familial past, for the ways in which women have made their mark through baking, handicrafts, and other pursuits.On the surface the idea of studying baked goods and produce might seem daunting. But Nurse creatively uses sources such as newspaper clippings and competition records to reconstruct women's participation in Ontario's agricultural fairs. Nurse writes lush descriptions of the fairs' events—from judging criteria to contestant presentation to the packaging and staging of organic materials—so that the reader can imagine themselves as participants, judges, and audience members. These narratives also provide detailed information about the social context within which this history takes place. For example, women were initially prohibited from participating in riding shows, but it became increasingly more common for women to demonstrate their horsemanship as they pushed more and more into the “public sphere.” The importance of rural reform, and women as the centers of rural family life, are repeated themes throughout the book. Nurse demonstrates how reformers utilized fairs to teach women about new homemaking technologies and encourage these women to compete for prizes and prestige for their prowess in fields that were seen as “women's expertise.” Winning competitions in these areas demonstrated how much of a “good” woman, wife, mother, and community member you were.In Cultivating Community Nurse goes beyond the typical written archival sources on which historians tend to rely. Many beautiful photographs of fairgoers, competitors, and handicrafts alike grace the pages of this book and enrich the reader's understanding of the fairs' material culture. These images display, for instance, the intricacies of a hand-darned sock and handmade lace and quilts, demonstrating evidence of skills with which the modern reader likely is unfamiliar. A quilt made with poorly cut fabric and messy stitching compared to one that was meticulously sewn with even stitching is very obvious when looking at comparison photos. In her analysis, Nurse brings a real appreciation of these skills and the work that these women produced, reminding the reader of the many ways that women's cooking, gardening, and handicraft skills benefited their families and households. Before fabric was easily commercially available, homespun fabric was valued in these fairs, but only a few short years later, with the availability of cheap fabric in stores, this skill ceased to be exhibited. These stories exemplify how women adapted their household skills to the changing technology and economic needs of the time.In the book's introduction, Nurse acknowledges the limitations of her analysis, and she reminds the reader throughout that this is just the start of a conversation on women and agricultural fairs. She has little space to devote to deep racial analysis or the intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity in this book. These rural people were all individuals with unique and nuanced life experiences, some of which are unexplored in this study. Nurse encourages others to take up this mantle and further explore agricultural fairs as microcosms of Canadian society that can teach us about changing values and mores of rural communities.

What ugly and beautiful photographs reveal about COVID-19 lockdown experiences, everyday aesthetics and photography aesthetics.

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted our daily (visual) experiences, we asked people to take an ugly and beautiful photograph from within their homes. In total, 284 photographs (142 ugly and 142 beautiful) and accompanying statements were submitted and brought to light an intimate portrait of how participants were experiencing their (lockdown) home environment. Results revealed an aesthetic preference for (living) nature. Beauty and ugliness were also connected to good versus bad views, mess versus cosiness, unflattering versus flattering portraits and positive versus negative (COVID-19) emotions. In terms of photography strategies, editing and colour were important for beautiful photographs, whereas a lack of effort and sharpness showed up relatively more in ugly photographs. A follow-up study revealed that other viewers' (n=86) aesthetic judgements of the photographs were largely in line with the original submissions, and confirmed several of the themes. Overall, our study provides a unique photographic window on our everyday aesthetic experiences at home during the COVID-19 lockdown.

In Memoriam: Subhash C. Sinha

In Memoriam: Subhash C. Sinha

Donald Thomson: Observations of Animal Connections in Visual Ethnography in Northern Australia

ABSTRACT Donald Thomson is a legendary Australian anthropologist particularly noted for his early fieldwork in Northern Australia. He lived for extended periods in remote areas in Cape York then Arnhem Land from 1929 until 1943. While in the field, he made meticulous ethnographic and natural history fieldnotes, took aesthetically beautiful photographs and amassed a particularly large museum collection. Thomson made a delineation between his academic publications on anthropology-related subjects and those that related to natural history, reflecting the epistemological divide during his lifetime. Aboriginal engagement with different animals is hard to find by reading classic ethnographic texts, which tend to refer to animals as human symbols or totems, rather than as living beings of significance. Thomson’s fieldwork is exemplary, in terms of showing how anthropologists can utilise a combination of detailed observation, visual ethnography and zoological findings in order to enrich our understandings of relations between other cultures and other animals.

Highlights 2018: health stories in focus

There were many entries for this year's Highlights photography competition and we were delighted by the fascinating images readers submitted. 18 beautiful photographs were selected for publication in this week's issue.

Explore Texas: A Nature Travel Guide by Mary O. Parker

Reviewed by: Explore Texas: A Nature Travel Guide by Mary O. Parker Michelle M. Haggerty Explore Texas: A Nature Travel Guide. By Mary O. Parker. Photographs by Jeff Parker. Foreword by Carter P. Smith. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. xi + 302 pp. Illustrations, maps, index. $28.00 paper. Explore Texas: A Nature Travel Guide is a wonderful companion for the naturalist and nature enthusiast taking a trip across Texas. Author Mary O. Parker focuses on nearly 100 nature-related venues and events statewide organized by the seven official regions of Texas: Big Bend Country, Gulf Coast, Hill Country, Panhandle Plains, Piney Woods, Prairies and Lakes, and South Texas Plains. This guide serves as a sort of life list for what to see, when to see it, and why we should take the time to explore the natural landscapes, destinations, and events of each Texas region. Beautiful photographs by Jeff Parker [End Page 93] enhance each section. Each entry contains a map, travel directions, and tips for how to make the most of your adventure. Helpful activity icons like "wildlife watching," "geology gems," and more accompany each venue to help you see which nature activity is available. But what sets this book apart from other nature travel guides is the excellent education sections for each venue. It offers fascinating facts and intriguing details about specific aspects of each particular location. For example, the entry for the Brazos Bend State Park and George Observatory details the site's American alligators, Anhinga birds, and northern raccoons. This serves to enhance the explorer's experience and, one hopes, spark in that person an appreciation of the need for continued conservation and protection for these areas. Michelle M. Haggerty Texas Master Naturalist State Program Coordinator Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods

Review: Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods 78 Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods ARUP’s Foresight, Research and Innovation and Integrated City Planning Teams (December 2017) London, 71 pages Available from https://www.arup.com/perspectives/cities-alive-urban-childhood In 1996, the second UN Conference on Human Settlements, widely known as Habitat II, addressed the pressing global need, in an increasingly urbanized world, for towns and cities to place sustainable, livable environments that support universal human rights at the heart of their plans. The Istanbul Declaration (United Nations, 1996), which established the Habitat II agenda, included the recognition that this endeavor must pay particular attention “to the needs of… children and youth for safe, healthy and secure living conditions”; it resolved to “ensure… the effective participation of youth in political, economic and social life.” More than this, as UNICEF (2018) reports, the conference declared that the wellbeing of children is the ultimate indicator of a healthy habitat, a democratic society and of good governance. This idea, that “children are a kind of indicator species,” was later famously taken up by Enrique Peñalosa, mayor of the Colombian capital, Bogotá, who added: “If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.” Peñalosa’s words are frequently cited at gatherings of the child-friendly city (CFC) movement that has developed around the Habitat II agend, and they now can open this succinct, handsome publication from the planning and design specialists, Arup. Although presenting itself as a “report,” the document might be more accurately described as a short guide. It breaks the innately complex, crosscutting issues of its subject matter—children’s rights, urban design and sustainable development—into manageable headings and accessible lists: two “key concepts” (“everyday freedoms” and “children’s infrastructure”); seven “key messages” (e.g. “Decision makers should be opportunistic and strategic, and integrate child-friendly thinking into all aspects of city making”; five “core challenges” (from “traffic and pollution” to “isolation and intolerance”); seven broad “benefits” (from “health and wellbeing” to being a “catalyst for improving cities”); and 14 “recommended interventions” (e.g., “Intergenerational spaces,” “Pedestrian priority,” “Neighborhood mapping”). The main section is illustrated with neat, thumbnail case studies (beginning, inevitably, with Bogotá), helpfully located on a map of the world, and the whole document is liberally garnished with beautiful photographs of children, sharp infographics and a welter of carefully referenced (though not always accurately represented1 ) facts. 1 For example, “…30% more children (in developing countries are) overweight compared to developed countries” (p. 11) is clearly a mistake; the figure refers to the rate of increase. Book Review: Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods 79 Although the document aims its conclusions at “policy makers and city leaders, developers and investors, and built-environment professionals,” many other practitioners may also find it useful as a handy summary of some of the main issues, a resource from which to discover further reading, and—being highly accessible in both style and format—an effective campaign tool. Advocates seeking to engage busy policymakers in a more serious consideration of children’s needs in the planning process could do worse than pull out some of the key points here. Indeed, presenting the document as a whole—with its well-marshalled facts and concise summation of challenges and solutions—may help to make many a policy case for adopting a more child-friendly approach to urban planning. This is the document’s stated purpose, and, with Arup saying it is already their most downloaded publication ever, in this it must be judged a success. There are nevertheless a number of interconnected criticisms that can be made of this report, touching on issues for the CFC movement in general. The first is that it gives the impression that children’s well-being and the safeguarding of their rights is primarily a matter of design, as though the built environment were the main determining factor in children’s quality of life. Arup are planning and design specialists, and so perhaps this perspective is inevitable. They may also argue that the CFC idea was conceived to focus attention on the importance of the built environment for...

Review: A Year in Rock Creek Park: The Wild, Wooded Heart of Washington, DC

Choukas-Bradley, Melanie. A Year in Rock Creek Park: The Wild, Wooded Heart of Washington, DC Staunton, VA: George F. Thompson Publishing, 2014. 240 pp., illus., maps, photographs. ISBN: 9781938086243, US$29.95, paper. Photographs by Susan Austin Roth.When walk through the bottomland forest and into the upland woods, may be deep in solitary reverie but am never alone (p. 7). Naturalist Melanie ChoukasBradley (with beautiful photographs by Susan Austin Roth) presents a colourful ode to Rock Creek Park, ...a welcoming sanctuary for millions of city-dwellers who feel the need to commune with Nature (p.7). Through vivid descriptions and poetic musings, Choukas-Bradley documents the 'natural events' of a year in the park. The detailed daily entries are divided into four seasons and record the changes that take place over the course of the year in this crucial urban habitat for birds, wildflowers, trees, and those seeking solace from the bustle of the Washington, DC area. While the author describes the physical and aesthetic as well as emotional refuge in lyrical detail, what sets this book apart is the undertone of the imminent threat to the habitat from global climate change.In Part 1, Winter, the author begins with her reluctant move from their rural family home in Comus, Maryland to be closer to the city, and how she initially felt exiled from Nature (p. 13) until discovering Washington's Boundary Bridge Trail Network- named for the border between D.C. and Maryland-and Rock Creek Park. Quoting from Thoreau's 1854 Walden, I went to the woods because wished to live deliberately., (p. 17) the author explains that she wished to do the same thing but had to remain in the city both for work and her family. Yet she is able to live my life in communion with Nature, here in Rock Creek Park, where.I feel have lived in the woods all along (p. 17). She describes both the personal significance of the sanctuary through its whitened winter landscape, the storms and sleet, different paw prints in the snow, and the melting of the creek ice at the beginning of spring.With its rich descriptions but clear warnings about the fragility of the author's beloved sanctuary, the book serves as homage to an ecosystem, while demonstrating its fragility. Choukas-Bradley writes:What is winter if not the chance to rest in a state of semi-hibernation, the stillness and cold serving as antidote to the industry of all the other seasons. .the stillness that is not death but the incubating prelude to exuberant rebirth. (p. 27)In Part 2, Spring, Choukas-Bradley tells us: .I want to be out of the cave and into the day and the night, especially the fertile night (51). Spring brings with it new life, birds repopulating the wooded areas, and first leaves on plants and trees bringing new hope and rebirth from the winter hibernation. …

Singapore. Starry island: New writing from Singapore Edited by Frank Steward and Fiona Sze-Lorrain Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 26, 1 (2014). Pp. xiv + 226. Photographs.

Starry island: New writing from Singapore Edited by frank steward and fiona sze-lorrain Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 26, 1 (2014). Pp. xiv + 226. Photographs. Singapore's second literary battle is effectively over. The first--begun in its early years of independence--concerned the creation of a worthwhile literature by Singaporeans against the pressures of a colonial legacy. Its outcome was a small but stable body of canonical voices, against which a new battle was soon waged from the late-1990s. That second struggle had found the institutionalised form too suffocating and aimed to move Singaporean writing beyond having fixed centres and margins. The plan was to empower it and to render it more versatile, more able to embrace innovations as well as to reassess traditions. It is at this exciting point in Singapore's bumpy but eventful literary development that Starry Island appears. Edited by Fiona Sze-Lorrain with Frank Steward as Manoa's long-time series editor, Starry Island is a fresh experience of what it loosely calls New writing from Singapore. The anthology goes as much through familiar terrains such as Boey Kim Cheng's haunting memories of place and Alfian Sa'at's sensitive heartland stories as through unexpected ones such as Wena Poon's charming tale of friendship between two mainland Chinese in Singapore. Karen Kwek's and Ng Yi-Sheng's cheeky stories--one realistic, the other speculative--and Grace Chua's new poems are invigoratingly good too. To be sure, this is an elegant book in both its presentation and its choice of entries. The anthology is highly conscious of the immediate paradox a mere mention of Singapore conjures up, a small but stubborn spot in Asia sharply defined by dying, vibrant cultures as well as thriving, sterile urbanity. This awareness is not so much described or argued as shown to us through the generous use of beautiful photographs of both Singapore's changing cityscape and early-twentieth-century Chinese and Peranakan families. The visual contrast spotting the volume overtly serves to impose a form on a selection of texts that would otherwise pull in way too many directions. Whether the essential plan is then to cut deeper like a surgeon or simply to leave tensions as marks of exotica is less certain. This question is not helped by how we are also kept clueless throughout as to what 'new writing' exactly means. It certainly does not involve historical time since the oldest inclusion here is Khoo Seok Wan's translated Chinese poems from the colonial times. The book does not limit itself to recent or unpublished works either, and there are a number of well-known entries from a few years to a few decades back. The appearance of young, strong voices--perhaps best represented by Amanda Lee Koe and Nicholas Liu--gives a foretaste of what newness in Singaporean literature must mean increasingly. …

Handbook of Mammals of the World, Vol. 5: Monotremes and Marsupials

Wilson, D. E., and R. A. Mittermeier (eds.). 2015. Handbook of Mammals of the World, Vol. 5: Monotremes and Marsupials . Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, Spain, 799 pp. ISBN: 978-84-96553-99-6, price (hard cover), €169.00. Much praise has already been given in reviews of the 4 preceding volumes of Handbook of the Mammals of the World (HMW) for their exceptional high publication quality, the outstanding and up-to-date text, and the great number of beautiful photographs and illustrations of mammals. All of this applies to the latest exquisite offering in this 8-volume series. HMW Volume 5, covering the Monotremes and Marsupials, is an impressive, weighty tome of 799 pages lavishly illustrated with 717 color photographs, 44 color plates, and 375 distribution maps that cover the world’s five monotreme and 350 marsupial species. The book follows the format of the previous volumes; sections reflect classification to Order and a chapter is devoted to each Family (21 in total). Each chapter is subdivided into sections on Systematics, Morphological Aspects, Habitat, General Habits, Communication, Food and Feeding, Breeding, Movement, Home Range and Social Organisation, Relationships with Humans, and Status and Conservation. Each chapter also includes one or more color plates of all extant species, followed by a detailed treatment of each species. The latter resembles the format common to field guides, with a distribution map for each species, and useful notes on its physical description, activity patterns, habitat, food and feeding, and other valuable information. However, unlike a field guide—at 31×24cm, and nearly 6 kg—this “handbook” won’t conveniently fit in your pocket or daypack. So while it doesn’t replace your favorite field guide, it certainly complements it greatly. The text is both easy to read and informative. The main body of each chapter tends to be a general overview of the systematics, biology, and … Ecosystem Management, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia; e-mail: kvernes{at}une.edu.au.

Birds in the Hand: Three Ornithological Gems

Book Review| August 01 2015 Birds in the Hand: Three Ornithological Gems Penguins: The Ultimate Guide. By Tui De Roy, Mark Jones, and Julie Cornthwaite. 2014. Princeton University Press. (ISBN 0691162999). 240 pp. Hardcover. $35.Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife. By John M. Marzluff. 2014. Yale University Press. (ISBN 0300197071). 320 pp. Hardcover. $30.Hummingbirds. By Ronald Orenstein, Michael Fogden, and Patricia Fogden. 2014. Firefly Books. (ISBN 1770854002). 256 pp. Hardcover. $35. Cate Hibbitt Cate Hibbitt 1Lincoln School, Providence, RI 02809, chibbit@lincolnschool.org Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The American Biology Teacher (2015) 77 (6): 469–470. https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2015.77.6.469 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Cate Hibbitt; Birds in the Hand: Three Ornithological Gems. The American Biology Teacher 1 August 2015; 77 (6): 469–470. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2015.77.6.469 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe American Biology Teacher Search This trio of texts brings joy to exploring the rich diversity of bird life on earth. They present a wonderful span, from the exotic charm of hardy and gregarious penguins, to the tropical jewel-like wonder of hummingbirds, to the fascinating science to be learned behind our more familiar backyard birds. Any of these would be an enriching and pleasurable read by itself; all three together provide a wealth of visual splendor and intellectual reward. Penguins: The Ultimate Guide is just that – a comprehensive presentation of the habits, habitats, science, and conservation of the world's 18 species of penguin. The many beautiful photographs emphasize penguin diversity in a multitude of habitats. Information ranges from the strictly scientific (such as penguin evolutionary lineage) to cultural (did you know that Penguin books were published to provide “intelligent” cheap books, a means of “converting book-borrowers into book buyers”?). The text is both a... You do not currently have access to this content.

Re-Creating Bach’s Music and Life

Re-Creating Bach’s Music and Life Robert Miles (bio) Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven by John Eliot Gardiner (Knopf, 2013. xxxiv + 558 pages. Illustrated. $35) The author of this biography, John Eliot Gardiner, is an orchestral and choral conductor who has had many years experience conducting the works of Bach. In the preface to this volume he states, “It is this rich, sonorous world and the delight I take [End Page vi] in it, both as a conductor and as a lifelong student of Bach, that I most want to convey.” Convey it he does, in expressive sonorous prose. The unfolding of the prose has the quality of music throughout. The different periods of Bach’s life—early, middle, and late—are all centered around and expressed in relation to the music he was performing as a keyboard virtuoso, conducting as a cantor or choir director, and composing at the time. All of these activities were usually intertwined in Bach’s everyday life. This book is a masterpiece and a thing of physical beauty—visually expressive of its subject. One of its many beautiful photographs is of the interior of the cathedral at Eisenach. First Martin Luther and later Bach had active affiliation with this house of worship. There are two impressive portraits of Bach by Elias Gottlob Haussmann, and the reproductions of Bach’s handwritten music manuscript on the inside covers and throughout the volume are beautiful and compelling. The footnotes are extensive and informative, and the work is further enriched by Gardiner’s wide-ranging familiarity with present-day musical scholarship from which he has abstracted many apt quotations, some of which pertain to such interesting observations as the influence Bach’s music had on later composers—Haydn, Mozart, and Verdi. There are also intriguing and apt comparisons of Bach to writers such as Shakespeare and Dryden, and to painters including Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Rubens. Bach, as might not be surprising, was born into a musical family and became a child prodigy at the keyboard. What he learned from his father and older brother was reinforced and extended in the classroom; the ability to play and sing contrapuntally was instilled from an early age. In what was still the Lutheran school system, singing was valued as a proven way of helping pupils commit things to memory. Although the focus throughout this study is on the kinds of music Bach was writing at different periods of his life and the effect his performance ability and his insistence on performance standards in vocal ensemble had on his compositions, Gardiner does pay due attention to other transformative events in Bach’s life. Many of these are quite sad. Both Bach’s father and older brother died at early ages. Bach himself had seven children by his first wife, and thirteen by his second. A depressing number of them died at early ages such as four and six. The remaining children, however, were musical, and they could quite properly be called a musical family. His two sons, in fact, helped Bach prepare for musical programs by copying the parts for instrumentalists and soloists to use. It is a privilege to read the biography of a great composer written from the inside out musically rather than from the outside looking in trying to make sense of truly monumental musical compositions. Even though it may be true that the more one knows about music the more this account will resonate, it is even truer that after reading this study the reader will hear more when listening to Bach than he or she ever has before. [End Page vii] For many years during his life Bach was known only as a keyboard virtuoso. But, as Gardiner makes clear, for Bach to perform was for him to improvise on a melodic idea, and it was from these on-the-spot combinations of notes that the incomparable two- and three-part inventions, canons, and fugues arose. It is one of the central revelations of this biography that, for Bach, to perform was to compose. We are all fortunate that he recognized this and took the time and trouble after a performance—no later than...

The Secret Life of Squirrels by N. Rose

Rose, Nancy. The Secret Life of Squirrels. Toronto: Puffin, 2014. Print.This picture book follows the story of Mr. Peanuts, a rather unusual squirrel who enjoys numerous activities that we do not typically associate with squirrels.He busies himself with cooking on the grill, playing the piano, and reading his favourite books. Despite all of the activities, he feels a sense of loneliness. He writes a letter to Cousin Squirrel to come for a visit. His cousin responds and gladly accepts his invitation. In preparation for his visitor, Mr. Peanuts completes various chores around the house such as vacuuming, laundry, and he even finds time to bake a hazelnut chocolate cake. When Cousin Squirrel arrives, they have a wonderful time together. This book is filled with beautiful photographs of wild squirrels in miniature photo shoots. Children and adults alike can appreciate the attention to detail in the miniature models, created by the author, and the squirrels who pose in them. At the end of the story, the book provides “Ten tips for photographing wildlife” and a “Q&A with Nancy Rose” that are interesting and informative. Overall, this book is easy to understand and offers a great message to children about sharing and playing well with others. Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Janice KungJanice Kung is an Academic Library Intern at the University of Alberta’s John W. Scott Health Sciences Library. She obtained her undergraduate degree in commerce and completed her MLIS in 2013. She believes that the best thing to beat the winter blues is to cuddle up on a couch and lose oneself in a good book.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Teresa Valdivia Dounce I am deeply grateful to the University of Arizona’s Southwest Center and Journal of the Southwest for publishing Among Yoris and Guarijíos: Chronicles of Anthropology, and to the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for providing the financial support to reproduce David Burckhalter’s beautiful photographs. I am especially grateful to Dr. Jeff Banister for his English translation of the manuscript, which has allowed this work to traverse linguistic borders and become available to a new and different audience. His efforts with this manuscript have been brilliant and exemplary, producing the kind of high-quality translation that can only come through hard work and a deep knowledge of the local and regional forms of the Spanish language present in this research. Perhaps this is why it has taken so long to complete an English-language version, despite a longstanding interest on the part of other researchers at the University of Arizona in doing so. I hope that Anglophone readers find something of interest in this book, and that they enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Teresa Valdivia Dounce Tepepan, Tlalpan, Ciudad de México Copyright © 2014 Arizona Board of Regents

True Love: 24 Surprising Stories of Animal Affection by R. Buchholz

Buchholz, Rachel. True Love: 24 Surprising Stories of Animal Affection. Washington: National Geographic, 2013. Print.True Love is a short gift book, meant as a Valentine’s Day gift book, filled with twenty-four stories about love between animals and accompanied by beautiful National Geographic photographs. These stories are generally less than a page long, and cover family ties between animals, including siblings, and parents, to friendship, and love. Animals featured in these stories include domestic animals such as dogs, pigs, ducks, sheep and donkeys, but also wild animals such as whales, flamingos, and elephants. Sometimes the stories are about farm animals, animals in the wild, or zoo animals.Rachel Buchholz, the author of the book, is the executive editor of National Geographic Kids and National Geographic Little Kids magazines. These stories were collected over the course of her fifteen years working in editing. The images are all taken by National Geographic photographers. Some of the images are actually of the animals in the stories, while other images are just the same species as those in the stories.True Love was designed as a gift book, and it truly embraces the format. Even though it is a picture book, the text might be long for some children to read through patiently. Each story is exemplified by only one picture. The language used is easily understood, however, and the beautiful photographs of adorable animals will draw readers. As the material deals with themes of family, love, and friendships, this is a book that many children will enjoy reading with their families.Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Colette LeungColette Leung is a graduate student at the University of Alberta, working in the fields of Library and Information science and Humanities Computing who loves reading, cats, and tea. Her research interests focus around how digital tools can be used to explore fields such as literature, language, and history in new and innovative ways.

‘IT'S NOT OVER ‘TIL IT'S OVER…’ CREATIVE THERAPY AND PARTNERSHIP WORKING AT WILLOWBROOK HOSPICE

Background & AimsThis creative therapy project raises awareness for the 2013 National Dying Matters Campaign. It's an experimental collaboration between hospice patient and artist Julie Williams, local artist Chantelle Townley,...

On the Trail of King Arthur: A Journey into Dark Age Scotland by Robin Crichton (review)

robin crichton, On the Trail of King Arthur: A Journey into Dark Age Scotland. Edinburgh: Luath Press. 2013. Pp. 189. isbn: 978-1-908373-15-1. $16.95.The title of this volume promises a suspenseful quest. Even more, Robin Crichton claims to revise, singlehandedly, all existing scholarship on the figure of 'Arthur' by the 'academic establishment' (14), creating his own methodology based on field work with a tribe of North American Indians and what Scottish Enlightenment thinkers called 'conjectural history' (16). The result, however, is a relatively uninspiring remix of information gleaned from the work produced by the very members of the 'academic establishment' Crichton rebukes. He first surveys the historical, cultural, political, economic, and archeological contexts of early medieval Britain. Then, based on the notion, 'so abhorrent to academics, that there is no smoke without fire,' he concludes that: Arthur existed; he came from a noble Northern family and was attached to the crack cavalry of the Macau; his enemies were the Angles, Saxons, and Picts; he was a Christian who crusaded to reinforce the new faith; he fought at the Battle of Badon; Merlin, 'the last of the Druids,' existed, but two generations later than Arthur. Only archaeology may be in a position, so Crichton holds, to discover the 'truth' and 'clear the obscurity of the Dark Ages' in the future (140).Not surprisingly, then, archaeological conjectures are at the heart of Crichton's argument as he proceeds to assign 'likely locations' (58) to Arthur's twelve battles, following Nennius and the Annales Cambriae as his organizational signposts. Numerous beautiful photographs, taken by Crichton himself, illustrate most of the sites, lending an air of evidentiary authenticity to his conclusions. Throughout the book, dozens of maps (some created for the volume, some out of the public domain), a timeline, an appendix on Britain during the Roman occupation, and a Gazetteer, which proposes a twelve day trip along the 'Arthur Trail,' strive to create additional probability for the author's views. Other inserts, especially the numerous samples of Gustave Dore's illustrations for Tennyson's Idylls of the King, are simply page fillers gleaned from the public domain rather than functional elements. One of them, albeit in different size and format, is used on the front cover, on page 14, and on page 104.There is no doubt that the elements of what we know about 'Arthur' deserve to be reevaluated and retold for new generations of readers. Except for the original photographs, however, this volume provides few features an interested reader could not also find in some of the better crowd-sourced entries in Wikipedia or in Brittannia. …

Rock Carvings in Hong Kong by William Meacham (review)

Reviewed by: Rock Carvings in Hong Kong by William Meacham Christopher Davis Rock Carvings in Hong Kong. William Meacham. Hong Kong: Meacham Publications, 2009. 168pp. ISBN 978-9-881-73242-2. Very little is known internationally about the rock art traditions of Southeast Asia, and even less about the rock art specific to the coastal shores of Hong Kong. The majority of the rock art sites discussed by Meacham are located on the islands of Hong Kong in the South China Sea. However, he also includes other known sites in the surrounding region, including those that have been recorded in Taiwan. The catalogue of regional sites makes this book useful to any researcher of rock art worldwide who would like to compare the archaeological contexts and thematic elements in this region to work that has been done elsewhere on cultural practices of rock art and their expression of ideas about local environments and the supernatural. Dual language texts in English and Chinese are accompanied by beautiful photographs, illustrating nearly every other page. All of the rock art images are petroglyphs, although some of the walls where they appear also seem to be stained with red, orange, yellow, purple, or brownish hues. Some stains are polychromatic in adjacent vertical or diagonal bands or spots, and at times the stains appear to be strongly weathered. However, no discussion of the stains (e.g., whether they were artificially applied to the surface of the rock, or if they occur naturally as lichen growth on the surface, or if they are natural hues in the rock matrix) is provided. The petroglyphs are typically referred to as carvings, indicating the author’s belief that abrading the surface with a harder engraver material produced them, although “pitting” designs are discussed as having been formed either naturally or through pecking (p. 84). A few motif terms are used, such as “cup-like hollows” to refer to cupules, and “game-boards” to refer to multichambered geometric patterns to which the author applies a functional analogy from a modern cultural practice of drawing a checkerboard on a surface to play a game. Meacham also attempts to assign the petroglyphs to particular chronological styles based on the presence of any combination of three broad motif categories: geometric, zoomorphic, or emblematic motifs. The challenge of categorizing is due in part to several petroglyphs that begin with one design and continue into another (e.g., blending a zoomorphic design into a geometric pattern along a single engraved line). Other general descriptive terms used by Meacham include: curvilinear, rectilinear, pits, grooves, and swirls. The last term does not appear to differentiate between the continuous spirals or the S-shaped spirals that can be visibly distinguished in the photographs. All rock art images are displayed in either black-and-white or color photographs, and one image is a digital artistic rendition. At the beginning of the book, Meacham informs the reader that the majority of these photos were taken during the 1970s. He does not provide the reader with specfic reasons for the delay in publication and impetus for self-publication here, although they may be implied in his remarks in the appendix [End Page 371] wherein he unleashes frustration with the Antiquities Advisory Board of the Hong Kong and Macau governments for botched attempts to conserve Hong Kong’s rock carvings. He brings attention to the follies of their installed drainage systems, concrete platforms, Perspex encasements, cement blocks, latex molds, and chemical surface treatments, which he suggests were actually detrimental to the preservation of the petroglyphs. These recent conservation efforts also prevent scholars from taking unobstructed photographs of the petroglyphs today. Meacham notes the potential degrading effects these well-meaning but misguided attempts to protect the petroglyphs have not only on the art itself but also on the natural landscape, although he attempts to be even-handed by noting criticisms of his own methods in the 1970s (i.e., highlighting the carvings with chalk to enhance visibility). However, Meacham does not offer any specific alternative methods to preserve the rock art sites, instead suggesting the government should “consult specialists” on the matter. Written in more of an essay style or public presentation style...

Baby Boy Singh

Baby Boy Singh

Framing the West: the survey photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan

The image of the untamed American West persists as one of our country's most enduring cultural myths, and few photographers have captured more compelling images of the frontier than Timothy H. O'Sullivan. Trained under Mathew Brady, O'Sullivan accompanied several government expeditions to the West-most notably with geologist Clarence King in 1867 and cartographer George M. Wheeler in 1871. Along these journeys, O'Sullivan produced many beautiful photographs that exhibit a forthright and rigorous style formed in response to the landscapes he encountered. Faced with challenging terrain and lacking previous photographic examples on which to rely, O'Sullivan created a body of work that was without precedent in its visual and emotional complexities. The first major publication on O'Sullivan in more than thirty years, Framing the West offers a new aesthetic and formal interpretation of O'Sullivan's photographs and assesses his influence on the larger photographic canon. The book features previously unpublished and rarely seen images and serves as a field guide for O'Sullivan's original prints, presenting them for the first time in sequence with the chronology of their production.