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Edited by Terril L. Shorb & Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
159 pages, with photos
$8.95 (Plus $5.65 P&H)
ISBN: 0-9653849-0-X
ISBN13: 978-0-9653849-0-2
Status: Currently available
"Many of us carry around in the worn wallet of memory
snapshots of wild animal faces. Fawns, bunnies, or red-breasted robins bring
a smile to our own. Other faces, however, sometimes summon shudders of revulsion,
even abject terror: rats, bats, spiders, slugs, and snakes are often among people's
least favored creatures.
"Likely, these creatures are less loved because they
are less known to us. Our dark imaginings
have kept us away from them. Negative
qualities attributed to the least loved beasts who inhabit our mindscapes do
not describe the true nature of the creatures out in the wildscape. So what might
happen if we venture to know these creatures better?"
—from the Introduction
The writers offer tributes to an astonishing variety
of creatures: coyotes to cockroaches, rattlesnakes to rats, bats to javelina,
crane flies to vultures. The effect of these tributes is to give us hope for
a human reconciliation with the natural world. For in learning to love the diversity
of life forms in our world, we rediscover it in its fullest expression of living
beauty. The contributors themselves present a splendid diversity of livelihoods:
zoologist to elementary school teacher, psychiatrist to computer programmer,
accountant to social worker, historian to dream researcher. This anthology includes
prose by Jim Nollman, Paul Schullery, Ursula K. Le Guin, and more, as well as
poetry by Susan Terris, Ann Weiler Walka, Elisavietta Ritchie, Bill Yake, Will
Inman, Ken Pobo, Laurel Speer, and others. |
