Front Yard Research Articles

Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio ed. by Neil Carpathios

Reviewed by: Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio ed. by Neil Carpathios Shea Daniels Neil Carpathios, ed., Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015. 176 pp. $47.95. As a young Appalachian woman so much of the writing I encounter from and about the region pulsates with contemporary geopolitics, pulsates with a strong desire to convey this particular place, to capture this particular Ohio. In this sense, the collection of poems and short stories in “Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio” is a torch song. These stories and poems moor themselves on experience, on a love of a [End Page 95] place. From that love of place come ruminations on inequality, stories of a deadly accident, and dirges on outmigration. Many of these writers crave universality, hoping it will bring economic possibility or credibility. Tf they can find the right words to ground folks who haven’t grown up in these foothills, they seem to think, they can take back some measure of regional power or dignity, disarm the rhetoric of geopolitics. They hope they can subvert the importance of modernity and replace its importance in ways that make sense here, in this Appalachia, in this Ohio. Yet like the old men in my town who refuse to call our factories by their current corporate names, our best writers understand the universal is most aptly conveyed in the singular. Donald Ray Polluck’s “The Jesus Lights” watches a couple bring their dead son’s car home to rust in the front yard. Christina Jones’s “The Last Shot” explores the complexity of ruin. Joel Peckham’s “Psalm 96” soapboxes the intricacy of sorrow. Throughout these poems and stories almost as much attention is paid to our land as to plot and character, from sycamore trees and foothills to the exploded hillsides lining our highways. And throughout these stories and poems, much like throughout these foothills, the land itself empowers and limits these plots and characters. They are intertwined and interdependent and, as this is writing from the Appalachian foothills, it simply could not be any other way. I grew up reading voraciously. So few of those voices explored what it meant to resolutely love a place at times unloved and feared by others. So few of those characters had the same valleys in their vowels as my Ohio. Later folks told me little writing came from Appalachia, like these foothills were something landlocked and barren. But like this anthology represents, these foothills are the furthest thing from landlocked. Every single river on earth leads right back to them. [End Page 96] Shea Daniels Ohio University Athens, Ohio Copyright © 2018 Paul Mokrzycki Renfro

The Babysitter

The Babysitter Anton DiSclafani (bio) Our son is five months old, and it is time to hire a babysitter. Pete doesn’t crawl, doesn’t talk, doesn’t even sit up unassisted yet, but he requires all of our attention. We have just moved to the South. We know no one. My husband, adopted from Korea as an infant and reared in a taciturn, Lutheran Minnesota, does not understand the chatty grocery store cashiers, the next-door neighbors who cut a path through our front yard as part of their morning walk, the owner of the roadside peach stand who talks to me for ten minutes while Mat and Pete wait in the car. “A lot to say about peaches?” he asks, when I slide into the driver’s seat, which has been baked by the sun in my brief absence. Pete is fussing; he hates the car seat. Mat sits behind me. Usually it is the mothers who ride in the back, distracting the baby with a stuffed animal, a rattle, but I am prone to motion sickness. And anyway, I like to drive. “Just the South,” I say. The peaches are warm in their plastic bag. They will be disappointing, later—mealy, flavorless—but for now they are something to look forward to. “Pete’s a tyrant,” I announce to Mat, later that night, after Pete has gone to bed. “A very sweet tyrant.” [End Page 49] The red well of his mouth, his pulsing fontanelle, his hands so fat they appear swollen: he is a tyrant I love beyond measure. Before Pete was born, I expected to be scared by him, by what might happen to him. He could contract any number of illnesses—meningitis, strep, herpes—and die. I could drop him. I could leave him in the bathtub for a split second, just long enough to drown. If I lay him on his stomach, I’d read, over and over, he could smother himself with the weight of his own head. Yet when we take him home he weighs eight pounds and one ounce, and he surprises me with his sturdiness. Also, I am too exhausted to worry about all the horrible things that might befall us. Still, at night when we are sleeping, Pete in a bassinet beside our bed, I graze his head with my palm to make sure it is warm. I feel, if not exactly careless, cavalier. I let our cats remain in the bed with us at night, a thing I never thought I’d do. I surprise myself in another way, too: I don’t worry about his safety with a babysitter. I worry about what the babysitter—still nameless, now, still a young woman yet to be invited into our house—will make of us. I post an ad on the university’s student job site and wait. Must have experience with infants, I write. Must be a non-smoker. Must like animals. Must be certified in infant CPR, though neither Mat nor I are. There are barely any responses, at first, and I wonder if I have done something wrong. I wonder if the college girls—I picture them lounging on colorfully clad dorm beds, laptops propped up on knees, scrolling through ads late at night—sense something about our family. If they can read between the lines. It’s what good babysitters do, after all: they know how to manage controlling mothers, vaguely inappropriate fathers. They know how to disappear from a room, quietly, taking the child with them. They know how to become indispensable without calling attention to the family’s need in the first place. [End Page 50] What exists between the lines for us? My son isn’t white. My husband isn’t white. We aren’t religious, in a place where half the people we encounter have decorated themselves with crosses: dangling from necks, embroidered on shirts, stamped on license plates. We are driving to get barbeque for lunch, Mat and Pete in the backseat, and Mat asks, of a large building, “Is that a bank?” “No,” I say. “That’s a mega-church.” “Jesus,” Mat says, and we laugh. He was...

Study Of Lampungnese Traditional Home Garden Design

Lampung is one area in Indonesia which has a traditional culture that comes from two groups of descents, they are ulun Lampung Pepadun and ulun Lampung Saibatin. Lampungnese traditional culture has been well-known by Indonesian people for its traditional dances, traditional clothing, or traditional home architecture. However, Lampungnese traditional home garden recently may not yet been described. Information related to Lampungnese traditional home garden is still very limited and it does not yet represented the culture based design concept. This research was directed to identify the elements of the home garden and map it into design concept of the Lampungnese traditional home garden based on information of Lampungnese traditional culture. The study was conducted by using descriptive approach through literature review, interviews and cultural exploration, as well as field observation. The study was able to identify the elements forming the Lampungnese traditional home garden, namely gakhang hadap, walai, outdoor kitchenette, firewood place, outdoor kitchen, livestock barns, as well as plants. Space layout of the home garden comprises front yard (tengahbah/terambah/beruan), side yard (kebik/kakebik), and backyard (kudan/juyu/kebon). Each element of the garden is located in the right place of the space layout.

“Not in their front yard” The opportunities and challenges of introducing perennial urban meadows: A local authority stakeholder perspective

The growing evidence base for the benefits for people and wildlife of nature-based solutions to managing urban green infrastructure lacks research investigating land manager perspectives on their implementation. To address this gap, we explored UK local authority manager perceptions of the challenges and opportunities of introducing perennial urban meadows to prioritise biodiversity and aesthetics. This was co-produced as an experiment in urban greenspaces with Luton Parks Service and Bedford Borough Council 2013–15. We conducted semi-structured interviews with the eight stakeholder managers involved to identify key factors impacting on the perceived feasibility of future urban meadow establishment in other areas. All managers identified three dominant factors (aesthetics and public reaction, locational context, and human resources and economic sustainability). Additional factors (local politics, communication, biodiversity and existing habitat and physical factors) varied in importance according to personal values and managerial role. Support for future meadow introduction and a desire to overcome the economic challenge of the disposal of meadow arisings were related to manager biocentricity. Managers were aware of changing public values leading to increasing acceptance of a messier urban aesthetic. They perceived perennial meadows as a realistic alternative to amenity mown grass that in specific contexts could increase local biodiversity and enhance aesthetics if implemented in consultation with the public and local councillors. Our findings have relevance for the wider implementation of such nature-based solutions to urban GI management: Changes in management practice such as the introduction of perennial meadows have significant political, strategic, economic and practical implications and cannot be viewed purely as a technical challenge.

Legacy effects and landscape choices in a desert city

Lawns are a traditional landscape choice in urban neighborhoods, and their pervasiveness results in extensive irrigation around the world. Focusing on the semi-arid metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this paper examines residents’ actual and preferred landscapes for both front and back yards; specifically considering grass (mesic) yards, gravel-based (xeric) yards, and mixed (oasis) yards that include some grass and some gravel. Since xeric yards can conserve water, practitioners have promoted them as a drought-tolerant alternative to traditional lawns. Understanding the factors that motivate or constrain landscaping choices can facilitate the transition from lawns toward more naturalistic alternatives. This paper provides an original analysis of how legacies in the Phoenix region—including local landscape traditions and development history—affect yard choices. Using survey data and inferential statistics, we found that longer-term residents—as measured by the proportion of a resident’s lifetime spent in the Phoenix region—more often chose grassy landscapes compared to newcomers. This is counter to the common assumption that newcomers to the desert prefer lawns; instead, long-time residents seem to be accustomed to the long-established luxuriant landscapes of ‘the Phoenix Oasis.’ Residents of older neighborhoods also chose grassier landscaping compared to residents in newer areas, who tended to choose xeric yards. Altogether, these findings reflect the lasting legacies that previous landscaping choices have in urban environments, where changes in preferences and practices take time. Ultimately, the legacy effects of past choices often persist, thereby impeding efforts to promote drought-tolerant and naturalistic landscapes.

Building Community, Breaking Barriers: Little Free Libraries and Local Action in the United States

Building Community, Breaking Barriers: Little Free Libraries and Local Action in the United States

Transformations in the gardens and landscapes of the historical Traituba’s Farm

The historic garden should be considered one that has cultural significance, being not only the squares and public gardens, but also its first manifests found in the form of orchard garden and vegetable garden in the historic farms of Brazil. Traituba’s Farm located in southern Minas Gerais, on the Royal Road route, is considered an important historical farm that emerged in the eighteenth century during the settlement process of this region. It was in the same period, that current rural landscape from southern Minas Gerais, composed of several other historic farms and the historic rural gardens began their formation process. The aim of this study was to conduct a historical and cultural rescue of the gardens and landscapes of the Traituba’s Farm. With this rescue, characterize and analyze their landscapes in their different ages, as well as identify and understand the main morphological changes of its gardens included in the architectural complex of the farm. This study focused on the period between 1725 and 2013. To trace the historical, cultural and landscape evolution, it was made researches through site visits, interviews, bibliographic and iconographic research, always following the principles of studies of historic gardens. Traituba’s Farm since its formation was always a region icon, because of its wealth, power and intense trade. Its landscapes have undergone many changes and are characterized initially as a pastoral model, then the bucolic and picturesque style, after the construction of the new farmhouse. With the decline of its activities, decades later the model that remained was the picturesque and pastoral as its origin. For a long time, its gardens were presented as orchards gardens and vegetable gardens with utilitarian characteristics, influenced by the Portuguese culture. Just in 1950s the front yard received a significant intervention and new species were planted where that the design can be seen until today. The significance of this paper is due to the historical value of the Traituba’s Farm, the magnificence of its architectural ensemble, peculiarity of gardens and landscapes, and great cultural representation in the region

On Visiting Faulkner’s Grave, and: Before My Mother Moves South, and: Northern Cardinal in Winter, and: Mississippi Gambers after Dusk

On Visiting Faulkner’s Grave, and: Before My Mother Moves South, and: Northern Cardinal in Winter, and: Mississippi Gambers after Dusk Rob Shapiro (bio) On Visiting Faulkner’s Grave He said time is dead as long as it’s beingclicked off by little wheels; only whenthe clock stops does time come to life. i My stepbrother pinned a shotgun shell to his breast pocket when he got married, wore aviators even though dark pastures of clouds brushed above the delta and turned, suddenly, to rain. He planted his footprints deep in the black dirt to see how much the land could hold, how quickly it committed us to memory. And because this was Mississippi, he named his son for himself—the same way his father named him. ii Framed and gawking, the dead decorate my family’s walls— [End Page 64] local ghosts looking out, captured in crops of cotton, the white fields ripe as if blooming with snow. Always, a bloodshot sky just out of reach— always, they refuse to smile for the camera aimed like a pistol at their hearts, its aperture drawing in their sweat-drenched collars and rolled-up sleeves— their work-boots muddied in the same soil tilled year after year. iii When I visited Faulkner’s grave, grazed my hand on the granite stone lined with empty flasks and whiskey fifths, I could have walked the mile down to the house where my stepbrother was raised. And I’ve read of doom, the lord marching his angels out of Mississippi. I’ve read of generations held in the rough arms of countryside— the bluffs and fields and sky. iv He sends photographs to Carolina, prints taken with his father’s old Kodak. I imagine my stepbrother working [End Page 65] the darkroom until dawn: lightheaded from fixer fumes, his fingers uncoiling loose spools of film. Tin sink. Safelight. His son bursting into focus from the shallow darkness— already looking back. Before My Mother Moves South Another week of flurries and frozen rain.You let the sheltie out into the stiffwinter dawn, still thick with stars and fogwhile upstairs, my sister and I sleep—the three of us living togetherfor the last time. Snow-chained truckssand the street, rattle through the darkpast the For Sale sign buriedbeneath our bulldozed banks. Come spring, you’ll be kneelingin the flooded front yard, white statuetteof Saint Joseph held to your chest.Too superstitious not to try prayerto sell the house, you’ll break openthe half-thawed earth and pushthe figurine deep inside the tangled dirt,speaking to it, bargaining. Mother, I want to keep you in that housea little longer, standing by the window [End Page 66] watching the sheltie pace the yardand sink through the melting drifts.The radiator clinks its cast-iron heart;you stir your coffee, spoon rattling rim,and look out at the linden treescradling abandoned nests like palmscupping water—you wait there for the skyto brighten, to disappear behind the rushof snow that falls and clings to nothing. Northern Cardinal in Winter My father is not the feather nor the red crest,but the song sung from the canopies— the slender trill needling through frost and frozen light,woven through the hills outside my bedroom window. And you might think I mean my father is beautifulor far off, some small echo I can’t trace. Truth is, I find he follows like that flickering voice lifting over power linesand fresh snow, that bright fragment I’ve always known. [End Page 67] Mississippi Gamblers after Dusk Gathered on the lawn between the chicken coop and the pond, still high from spring’s thaw, we watch my stepbrother kneel on the jetty beside the thicket of cattails loading tube-launched fireworks. Across the water, rows of barbed wire border the pastures, fence us in as gunpowder cracks like a sheet of ice, sends a Mississippi Gambler streaking across the swath of summer sky until it bursts into light, familiar constellations that drift down, disappear. We grip cans of beer and call to each other...

Karo

Karo Gurney Norman Winter 2009 Grandma thought our old dog Karo had gone mad. Karo was real old, and she frothed around her mouth some, but I knew she wasn’t mad. I tried to get in on the talk about Karo, but nobody listened to me. Grandma told Uncle Delmer they might have to shoot Karo. I thought it was something they’d talk about some more, and I went [End Page 144] to the front yard to play. But then I heard a gunshot, and I ran back, and there was Karo flopping on the ground by the coal pile, shrieking and crying and trying to pull herself along with her front legs. Delmer had shot Karo in the hindquarters with his .38 pistol. I wasn’t but nine but I knew that if he had to kill her he ought to of tied her to a post and took a steady aim at her head with a .22 rifle like you would a hog. Delmer had stood on the back porch steps and tried to kill Karo with a pistol from way across the yard, and her a-running. Soon as I came around the house there was another shot, and then another one. The bullets hit Karo in the belly and in the neck, and they still didn’t kill her. She screamed and cried and tried to crawl away. Then Grandma came running out of the house with the .22, cussing Delmer all to pieces. She was going to get up close and put poor Karo out of her misery. But then Delmer shot again, and this time he hit Karo in the head and she quit screaming. Delmer’s last shot almost hit Grandma. She stopped in her tracks and stared at Karo on the ground. Then she walked over to Delmer and took his pistol away from him. She said, “You leave my house.” Delmer looked like he didn’t know who Grandma was. But he obeyed her. When he went out of sight behind the house, I ran over to where Karo was laying. Her body was tore all to pieces. “Get the shovel, Wilgus. Get the pick.” I watched Grandma open the corn crib in the barn and take out a feed sack. While I went to get the tools, Grandma wrapped Karo up in the burlap. About that time Aunt Evelyn came out of the house and walked over to where we stood. Grandma carried Karo in her arms, and Evelyn helped me carry the pick and shovel and headed out across the field. We dug Karo’s grave under the bamgilley tree in the field behind the barn. Grandma did most of the work. She fixed the burlap bag tighter around Karo, then laid her in the [End Page 145] grave. I helped shovel the dirt back in the hole. When the work was finished, Grandma picked up a flat limestone rock and put it on the grave. Then she picked up the shovel and started walking back to the house. Aunt Evelyn walked behind Grandma, carrying the pick. I stayed at the grave awhile, glad to be alone with my dog. [End Page 146] Gurney Norman Gurney Norman is the author of Divine Right's Trip, Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories and Ancient Creek: A Folktale. Stories from Kinfolks were the basis for three short films. He was was given Helen M. Lewis Community Service Award, and was appointed Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2009-2010. Norman serves as senior writer in residence at the Appalachian Writers Workshop. Copyright © 2017 Berea College

The Dirt, and: One Week after the Election

The Dirt, and: One Week after the Election Wendy Barker (bio) The Dirt A neighbor across the street has paved over his whole front yard. Easier to hose off the dog shit,he says. No dirt in the house, no need to scrape his feet at the door. But dirt isn’t only filth, nastystuff. It’s the soil our spinach and potatoes grow from. In the Bible, the first human’s name:Adam, meaning earth. And the latest “dirt” on dirt—we’re running out. That’s the skinny, ourdirt’s grown skinny. From the Koran: “They tilled the soil and populated it in greater numbersto their own destruction.” All this year our own neighborhood’s been surrounded by earth movers,clanking, beeping machines: wheel loaders, dump trucks, bulldozers, back and forth over acres offormer woods, native grasses, the live oaks and juniper already chain-sawed down and hauledoff. Flattening the ground to make way for another pharmacy, another body spa, nail salon,more storage units. Scrape it up. Skin of the earth, soil. The interface between rocks and plants andanimals, including us. The poet Roethke: “God bless the ground, I shall walk softly there.” I guessmy neighbor’s never read Roethke, would think his poems just “horse pucky,” not realizing howanimal feces nourish the earth. In 1916, Vladimir Simkhovitch argued that lack of dirtcaused the decline of the Roman Empire. Even Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, writing in [End Page 22] ad 60, noted that Rome’s agricultural problems were due to farmers’ poor treatmentof the soil. I remember the mud pies we made as children, feet sloshing in sloppy dirt. And ourparents smiled. Shall I tell the neighbor about the new process called “earthing”? Simpleenough, you let your bare feet walk on some bare ground. I need to do this. Dirt, we’venow learned, contains antidepressant microbes that cause serotonin levels to rise, isbetter than Prozac, and with no side effects. One Week after the Election November 2016 I’m in the er with my husband, a kidney stone, it turns out, stuck up there,no seed from which anything but pain can grow. Stone sober, they say,and is he ever, grimacing between a rock and a hard place. Too bad he doesn’tdrink—a little bourbon might help. For days I’ve been rereading Yeats,“Easter 1916”: “All changed, changed utterly.” Stoney, rocky. But no rockto lean on. The doc now says my husband’s kidney stone might be too bigfor him to pass. “The stone’s in the midst of all,” says Yeats. Nectarine,apricot pits: seeds like stones, swallow one of those, you’re in trouble. Butplanted in good dirt, seeds can press down furry white roots, send out pale [End Page 23] green stems, leaves, then flower, fruit again. Sweet flesh surrounding the seed,the pit. I need to focus more on fruit, stop keening over this election. Can’tlet it harden me to stone. How I wish I could inject some kind of power-packed seed into my husband’s kidney stone, let it sprout roots, stems that wouldunfurl, splinter his stone into minuscule motes to drop out of his sweetbody, join the pebbles and stones we’ll step on as we walk to the car for me todrive him home, where we’ll munch on peaches, biting gingerly to avoid the pit. [End Page 24] Wendy Barker Wendy Barker’s sixth collection, One Blackbird at a Time, received the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and was published by BkMk Press in 2015. Her fourth chapbook, From the Moon, Earth Is Blue, was published by Wings Press in 2015. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2013. Recipient of nea and Rockefeller fellowships among other awards, she teaches at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Copyright © 2017 University of Nebraska Press

The Witness

The Witness A. Molotkov (bio) My cat killed a baby bird after killing its mother. The baby bird had a small hole in its head. The head itself was very small. The bird was still alive when I found it. It kept dozing off – a second or two later it would awake with a spasm. Its eyes opened and closed, opened and closed. I was torn, uncertain what to do. It seemed evident that the bird was not going to make it. But I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know enough about baby birds. I watched it for a few minutes. Then I left it and went on with my day. What was the baby bird thinking? In its dreams, it was briefly able to fly – something it had not learned in life and would never get a chance to learn. It flew over the backyard, enjoying a glorious experience first, followed by an abrupt loss of control, as if the texture of the air itself had changed. The fall was terrifying, with an immense void opening up below, ready to suck everything in. When I checked back in about an hour, the baby bird had moved a few yards. Its condition appeared the same. Drowsy eyes, the body fighting, unwilling to give up, shaken by an occasional spasm. With each dream, each fall, the confidence required to continue flying was bitterly fading. The gigantic void was getting closer. The bird’s eyes were so small I could not distinguish the pupils. I didn’t know what to do. I took the baby bird in my clumsy hand and placed it in a less accessible location, by the fence, where the cat would not notice it. I was still hoping that the bird might survive. And if not, I wished it an easy death free from further aggression. [End Page 61] Once again, I left it and reentered my life. Now the bird was determined to escape. With this singular notion in mind, it overcame the inviting drowsiness and moved on, in one direction. When I came back about an hour later, it had made it through the gate and was in the front yard, still shuffling ahead in slow, spasmodic increments. If only it could find its mother! She would take care of everything, just like she always had: all that effort put into building the nest, warming the egg into life, supporting the being that had come out of the egg. This was the last time I saw the baby bird alive. Half an hour later, I looked out the window, and the immobility of that tiny organism was strangely stunning. The most efficient of flies had already discovered the new opportunity. I went to get a garbage bag. It’s when I came outside to pick up the baby bird that I found the mother. She was lying nearby, worms well at work on her body. I packed both birds together in the same bag and threw them away. My cat had killed them both, after all. Newly departed from the body, the baby bird’s soul floated around for a while, trying to comprehend what had happened, to learn a lesson. “It was not my fault. I was not unprepared,” it said to its little bird god, to its mother, to me, so hopelessly stunned by its death. “I wasn’t a bad bird. It was just an accident. I will try harder next time.” But it had not been an accident. It was my cat. I had been feeding it every day for quite a few years. “Is there a next time?” the bird asked after a pause. “I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t know.” I couldn’t lie, not now. [End Page 62] Three years have passed. Today we buried the cat who had killed the birds. She was hit by a car. Judging by the state she was in, it must have happened instantly. Cars travel fast. She must have gone out in one enormous scream. She didn’t experience the agony the little bird had gone through, and I didn’t witness her death. It was not her...

The Imagination Resettlement Program

The Imagination Resettlement Program Eli Barrett The first one I saw was a tiger with golden stripes—shiny gold, like metal—breathing fire in my front yard, scorching the hell out of my Bermuda grass. I still don't know where that thing came from, maybe a folk tale or a kid's cartoon. All I know is it scared the bejeezus out of me. I hunkered down in my house for days afterward, watching the news. At first, no one could figure out where all these strange creations were coming from. Then they started finding famous ones, like Tarzan and Tom Thumb, until finally a government spokesman came on and told us that centuries of creating characters had caused a crisis. The world of imagination was overpopulated and overflowing. The displaced characters had to live somewhere, and the government thought it would give the economy a boost to pay people to board them in their homes. For years I'd been scraping by on disability checks, so in spite of that bad brush with the tiger, I decided to apply to the program. Some people got lucky. Imagine having Winnie-the-Pooh living in your house! Or Cinderella! I got Mary. She was a simple advertising character, but she turned out to be better than any fairy tale princess around. They dropped her off on a chilly morning. She must have been freezing, because with my bad leg it took me a long minute to walk to the door. There was an icy sort of rain falling, like frozen sand, and it glistened all over her coat and blonde hair. "I'm Mary," she said, "the bridal detective." "I'm Carl," I said. Normally I have the manners to welcome someone to my home, even though I haven't had visitors for a while. With her, I couldn't get the words out at first. I kept thinking, What the hell is a bridal detective? Maybe I motioned for her to come in, because she stepped inside and handed me her coat. Underneath, she was wearing a strapless silk dress with a brooch shaped like two church bells. She held out her hand, and when I touched it, it was warm despite the cold. When she smiled, it was the most perfect thing I'd seen in a long time. Like every other day for the last four months, Mary makes lunch while I watch TV. It's deviled eggs again. Most of her cooking is finger food and has gotten repetitive, but I don't mind. She lays a napkin on my lap and sets the tray beside me. I ask her to stay and talk. Nothing is on TV except boring documentaries anyway. "Do you want to see the gown you bought me?" she asks. She twirls around, her new dress swishing around her legs. "It's perfect for a semi-formal rehearsal dinner." I chew an egg and watch her pose with her hands on her hips. "It's gorgeous," I tell her. Not long after she moved in, I went to a bookstore in town and sat down with a stack of bridal magazines, trying to find where she came from. They were all on the factual straight-and-narrow by then—real brides telling real stories, painfully dull ones at that. Then a few weeks later, I was in a thrift store that sold old magazines for a dime apiece. I dug through them until I found her. She was in a half-page ad for a traveling bridal show, wearing the clothes she'd come to me in. Under her outstretched hand was a list [End Page 51] of cities and dates. "I'm Mary the bridal detective," the tagline read. "I search for the best deals in bridal fashions." I stared at that page until I noticed damp spots were pimpling the paper. "Maybe soon we can go shopping for a wedding dress," she says. "The new collections are out now." The house could've surely used a little feminine touch, but since she's arrived, it's been more than just a touch. The windows have silk curtains, the tables have...

Mennonite Forest

Mennonite Forest Terese Svoboda (bio) Mennonite Forest, fiction, story, Terese Svoboda Released from the pickup, I'm instantly snow-ankled but I'm also down-coated and piqued, that is to say, doggone in wonder at the stand of ratty Chinese elm let grow at the edge of the circle, a circle here being the swath of a sprinkler system pivoting itself around a wheat field, and my father being the last one to let any inch of land go to pot. Go on, take a look, he says. I enter the forest. This part of the world being underrepresented in forests, this part of the world barely supporting its trees and those being mostly bare-assed cottonwoods, it is a vision, this forest. Not that the Chinese elm is much more than trash, water-sucker trash. But Dad hates trees so the appearance of a stand on his actual property, a guy who axes the slightest growth of vegetation if it doesn't bear grain, makes it worthy of inspection. We have just come from a lilac farm. He had to make that place sound like the plants were milked or fed or at least a real crop so as to be acceptable to his shunning of trees, but we did agree that it couldn't be called a lilac ranch. There was no herding involved. Rows of every lilac variety and color showpieced the place, plants ten feet tall and in bud, if not bloom. We stood on clumps of plowed dirt between the rows and sniffed and warded off bees in the snow. I want to say there was a reason for this stop at the lilacs, to commemorate this or that or even to buy a plant but similar to the stop at the elms, we were just in exit, meandering home, to his, not mine. I'm three thousand miles off, and here just to keep house for Dad for two weeks. Drive close to the lilac farmer's house, he said once we were finished with sniffing, and keep your eyes peeled for the baby grand inside. I wheeled us awfully close to a formidable pink bush in the front yard. The house will never sell, he said. A place with enough room for a piano like that? He rolled up his window on the snowy spring air, with the bees falling to the ground, having too much snow on their wings. I maneuvered back out onto the gravel and down the road. There's where the Mennonites turned out that fellow. He pointed away from the piano-cursed property. [End Page 35] The house was no plainer than any other in the area: flat ranch, driveway, front door, only a touch plainer than the house we had left behind, with its piano room. Turned out why I asked. Dad fooled with the heater. Right up to that front door walked a twenty-five-year-old man, he said. A twenty-five-year-old man. My father shakes his head at the number. I was by then waiting at the stop sign for directions. He motioned for me to go toward that fellow's house, across a road as straight as a line drawn across the county. He said the twenty-five-year-old knocked on the door and when the man answered, they both nearly had a heart attack. Sounds like a fairy tale, I said. It was. They looked exactly alike. No DNA test necessary. The man had to leave his wife and kids and move away. We passed the place. I guess Mennonites aren't big on forgiveness, I said. Dad laughed, then scumbled the inside of the windshield with the chuff of his hand to get rid of the haze we were making, breathing. Let me take you somewhere. We drove to this circle corner I am walking into, with its forested bit. The Mennonites use it, is all he had time to tell me before a corn-planting, fertilizer-bearing friend came up out of the dusty snow-covered spring light in his pickup. The first trees of the forest, when I reach them, are only about seven...

An Tho castle – Phu Yen province through archaeological excavations promoting the values of monuments, and developing potential local and regional tourism

An Tho Castle (An Dan Ward, Tuy An District, Phu Yen Province) was built in the reign of Minh Menh. It was the capital of Phu Yen Province for a long time. In August 1945 Revolution, in the two wars against France and the United States, the castle became a fierce duel between the resistance forces and ethnic enemies. This is also the birthplace of Tran Phu – the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. In 2008, the ancient castle conducted some archaeological excavations by the Culture, Sports and Tourism Department of Phu Yen Province and the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU-HCM to determine the scientific value of the relics. Through excavation, the entire old ground as well as some buildings (i.e. the area of road building, front yard, old wells, gates of various locations such as front, back, left, right, etc.) already existed. Many types of relics of numerous different materials such as stone, bronze, iron, terracotta, ceramic, porcelain, coins under the reign of Kings Minh Mang, Thieu Tri, Tu Duc and some stone bullets, cast iron were used for the defense of the city. Nowadays, with the advantages of geographical location, terrain, scenery, special sizes of architecture and relics of the past An Tho Castle, through archaeological excavations and historical culture, the surrounding landscape, we absolutely can confidently invest in the development of exciting new tours to contribute to the economic development of the province and the region. In this paper, the author mentions some of the following: 1. Introduction to preliminary excavations and findings. 2. Issue of conservation and promotion of the values of An Tho ancient ruin 3. Recommendation for the creation of tourism: Interior provinces: Tuy Hoa - Da Dia rapids - Quang Duc pottery village - An Tho castle - Da Trang pagoda. For the region: combination of tours with Nha Trang - Phu Yen - Binh Dinh.

VegeSafe: A community science program measuring soil-metal contamination, evaluating risk and providing advice for safe gardening

The extent of metal contamination in Sydney residential garden soils was evaluated using data collected during a three-year Macquarie University community science program called VegeSafe. Despite knowledge of industrial and urban contamination amongst scientists, the general public remains under-informed about the potential risks of exposure from legacy contaminants in their home garden environment. The community was offered free soil metal screening, allowing access to soil samples for research purposes. Participants followed specific soil sampling instructions and posted samples to the University for analysis with a field portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer. Over the three-year study period, >5200 soil samples, primarily from vegetable gardens, were collected from >1200 Australian homes.As anticipated, the primary soil metal of concern was lead; mean concentrations were 413 mg/kg (front yard), 707 mg/kg (drip line), 226 mg/kg (back yard) and 301 mg/kg (vegetable garden). The Australian soil lead guideline of 300 mg/kg for residential gardens was exceeded at 40% of Sydney homes, while concentrations >1000 mg/kg were identified at 15% of homes. The incidence of highest soil lead contamination was greatest in the inner city area with concentrations declining towards background values of 20–30 mg/kg at 30–40 km distance from the city. Community engagement with VegeSafe participants has resulted in useful outcomes: dissemination of knowledge related to contamination legacies and health risks; owners building raised beds containing uncontaminated soil and in numerous cases, owners replacing all of their contaminated soil.

Side Setback Areas as Side Yards Architectural and Psychological Evaluation of Side Setback Areas in Residential Buildings Using a Multidimensional Measure – Case Study of Sapporo Neighbourhoods, Japan

In urban environments, front yards and backyards are valued by residents for the opportunities they provide for enriching residential activities and promoting neighbourly ties. This article extends previous inquiries to identify the preferred uses and attributes of side setback areas in a comparatively dense urban environment. While front yards or backyards may contribute to sociability, no such effects have been reported for the side setback areas, with their function being instrumental rather than social. On the basis of a 2013 survey, the average side setback area in Sapporo (Japan) is <2 m wide and its typical use is for storage. A series of cross-statistical analyses was used to investigate possible correlations and to predict the role of the physical attributes of adjacent facades on the perceptions of the respondents. This was followed by an in-depth interview of those who volunteered. The results indicated that side setback areas that were lesser than 1-m wide were perceived as abandoned and assumed to have no function. However, those wider than 1 m were seen as secondary storage areas. Regardless of this, respondents valued the light and ventilation provided by side setback areas.

Species Composition, Diversity and Productivity of Homesteads in Southeastern Bangladesh

A homestead is an integrated production system where trees, crops, livestock and poultry are found in and around the household residence in Bangladesh. It is a potential production unit that provides various product, service and ecological functions. Almost all people in Bangladesh including landless households have homesteads in which they grow trees and crops even in a small piece of land. This study characterizes the species composition, diversity and productivity of the homestead production system in the Teknaf peninsula, southeastern Bangladesh. Survey data collection was from a total of 180 homesteads covering five household categories: large, medium, small, marginal and landless. Vegetable, fruit, timber, and livestock and poultry were common components in the homestead production system. Various types of plants were mainly concentrated in back yards, front yards, boundaries and corners of homesteads. The mean number of tree species per homestead was about 15. In total, 189 tree and shrub species were recorded, and were distinctly high and low in the large (363.7) and landless (55.7) household categories. Species composition, diversity and productivity of homesteads were found to be related to household categories. Richness and diversity of tree and shrub species increased with household size. Betel nut was the dominant tree species followed by mango, jackfruit and coconut. Annual income from homesteads also varied among the household categories, with a mean contribution of the homestead to annual income of about 25 %. A large portion of homestead income came from betel nut trees. There is scope to increase species diversity and income by designing homesteads with the engagement of women and other family members.

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Living Traces – an archive of place: Parramatta Girls Home

Back in 2005 I climbed on top of some rubbish bins and jumped over the fence into the front yard of what was then the Norma Parker Detention Centre. Peering up at its imposing facade, I remembered ...

Use of citizen science to identify factors affecting bird–window collision risk at houses

ABSTRACT Bird–window collisions at houses have been identified as a significant source of mortality for North American birds, but which types of houses and windows are most problematic remains poorly understood. We assessed how neighborhood type, yard conditions, house attributes, and window type influenced collision rates. Data were collected from citizen scientists across Alberta, Canada, who surveyed their houses daily. In relation to the best-fitting model, the yard model explained 58.1% of the explained deviance, the neighborhood model 45.6%, and the house model 42.6%. The factors that had the largest effect for predicting collision risk included season and whether the house was in a rural or an urban area (rural areas in the fall had a 6.0× higher collision risk than urban areas in the winter), the height of vegetation in the front yard of the house (trees >2 stories high increased collision risk by 3.6× compared to houses with no trees), and the presence of a bird feeder (which increased collision ...