Scratching the Horizon


Book Description

Scratching the Horizon presents a bitchin' love letter to sand and sea, and a spirited inside account of life with the "first family" of American surfing. In 1956, Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz stepped away from a successful medical practice and began a lifelong surfing odyssey that grew to include his wife Juliette, and their nine children. Together, the Paskowitz clan lived a vagabonding bohemian existence, eschewing material possessions in favor of intangible riches like health and good cheer . . . all the while careening along the world's coastlines in search of the perfect wave. In Scratching the Horizon, Izzy Paskowitz looks back at his unusual upbringing, and his lifelong passion for the sport that carries his family's stamp. As the fourth-oldest child in a family of inveterate surfers, rock stars, and beach bums, he is uniquely qualified to shine a light on a childhood that has come to symbolize the surfing credo, a reckless young adulthood that nearly cost him his sanity, and a maturing sense of self and purpose that allows him to lift others on the back of his experience. As the father of a son with autism and the founder of "Surfers Healing," a foundation devoted to expanding the horizons of children with autism through surfing, Paskowitz has found a way to connect the surreal aspects of his childhood to the harsh realities of adulthood, and he shares these discoveries in this wickedly entertaining and transforming memoir.




@ Three O’ Clock in the World


Book Description

Gene Tierney lives with her husband on an air force base in central Nevada. There sinister experiments are performed by ex-patriot scientists from Germany. Gene is hoping to return to the movies soon, provided she can find a good script (and regain her health after nervous breakdowns that have involved a variety of hallucinations that may or may not include German scientists).




Eyes on the Horizon


Book Description

Even centuries later, the final decades of the twentieth century are still regarded as one of the darkest and most perilous chapters in the history of humanity Now, as an ancient and forbidden technology tempts mankind once more, Captain James T. Kirk of the "Starship Enterprise(TM)" must probe deep into the secrets of the past, to discover the true origins of the dreaded Eugenics Wars -- and of perhaps the greatest foe he has ever faced. 1974 A.D. An international consortium of the world's top scientists have conspired to create the Chrysalis Project, a top-secret experiment in human genetic engineering. The project's goal is the creation of a new super-race to take command of the entire planet. Gary Seven, an undercover operative for an advanced alien species, is alarmed by the project's objectives; he knows too well the apocalyptic consequences of genetic manipulation. But he may already be too late. One generation of super-humans has already been conceived. Seven watches as the children of Chrysalis-in particular, a brilliant youth named Khan Noonien Singh -- grow to adulthood. Can Khan's dark destiny be averted -- or is Earth doomed to fight Singh a global battle for supremacy? "The Eugenics Wars: Volume One" is a fast-paced thriller that explores the rise of the conqueror known as Khan.




A Theory of Sentience


Book Description

Drawing on the findings of neuroscience, this text proposes and defends the hypothesis that the various modalities of sensation share a generic form that the author, Austen Clark, calls feature-placing.




New Horizon


Book Description

When you've been a policeman long enough to know that 'it's not working' for many people over thirty trapped by drugs, crime, and prison. What do you do? The answer for PC Jack Carter, as he slid rapidly towards his retirement, was to create and run a small residential support home for guys who wanted help. wanted change, but couldn't do it on their own.As a registered charity it needed trustees. Jack assumed that all trustees were good honest people but if they're not! What do you do? When someone steals what you've created. When someone poisons the mind of your best friend.What do you do?




Scratching the Ghost


Book Description

Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected by Major Jackson The stub of your left leg dangles as I hold you up, my hands inserted under your arms like a child. You are complaining about the itch, the burn; scratch the ghost of your calf and heel. —from "Scratching the Ghost" Dexter L. Booth's ruminations on loss in this award-winning debut are rooted in a time past but one still palpable and persistent. Here are memories of love lost, family mourned, a father absent, ghosts of hometowns and childhood. Here too is a "Short Letter to the Twentieth Century" and, finally, a "Long Letter to the Twentieth Century," as if across this collection the poet is mustering up the force to speak back to history. "In Dexter Booth's Scratching the Ghost, a cracked egg means the universe is splitting, the slap of a double-dutch rope is a broken-throated hymn, and splitting a squealing hog is akin to lovemaking. These are poems loyal to their own intrepid logic and reckless plausibility. Yet, lest the reader get too giddy in a fun house of mirrors, here, too, are the melodic laments and remarkable lyric passages of a poet who acknowledges the infinite current of melancholy that underlines his journey." —Major Jackson




Horizon's Lens


Book Description

In a lyrical memoir and meditation on the nature of time and place, Elizabeth Dodd explores a variety of landscapes, reading the records left by inhabitants and by time itself. In spring in the Yucatán peninsula, she marks the equinox among the ruins of the Maya. In summer in the Orkney Islands, she considers linguistic and historic connections with Icelandic sagas. In tallgrass country in the fall, she observes bison and black-footed ferrets returning to their ancestral landscape. In winter in the canyons of the Ancestral Puebloans, she notes the standstill positions of the sun and the moon. Ranging across continents and millennia, Dodd examines how people have inscribed the concept of time into their physical environments, through rock art, standing stones, and the alignment of buildings on the landscape. She follows the etymological trail of various languages, blending research with travel narrative and aesthetic meditation. From musings on the origin of the sandhill cranes’ transcontinental journey to reflections on the dimming light of shortening days as the winter solstice approaches, from depictions of exploding stars in ancient petroglyphs to meditations on the Great North Road, whose purpose scientists have yet to discover, Dodd captures the interstices of the natural world.




On the Wing of Occasions


Book Description




Scratching River


Book Description

Scratching River braids the voices of mother, brother, sister, ancestor, and river to create a story about environmental, personal, and collective healing. This memoir revolves around a search for home for the author’s older brother, who is both autistic and schizophrenic, and an unexpected emotional journey that led to acceptance, understanding and, ultimately, reconciliation. Michelle Porter brings together the oral history of a Métis ancestor, studies of river morphology, and news clippings about abuse her older brother endured at a rural Alberta group home to tell a tale about love, survival, and hope. This book is a voice in your ear, urging you to explore your own braided histories and relationships.




Scratching the Surface


Book Description

Scratching the Surface: Hip Hop, Remoteness, and Everyday Life presents the encounters of a young, rural teenager growing up in Devon, in the south-west corner of the UK as he engages with the evolution of hip hop, told through 28 particular and detailed memories drawn from the experience of the author. The book is divided into four parts, and situated between 1983 and 1986, explores the emotional growth, contextual questioning, and at times, naïve journey of the protagonist as he reflects on such minutiae as the price tags on record sleeves, the LED display on cassette players, and the zips on tracksuit tops. The author of Provincial Headz: British Hip Hop and Critical Regionalism returns with a quirky contextual novella which unearths a less canonical hip hop history of the 1980s and expresses the innocence and obsessions of an only child growing up in the sticks, as he strives to make sense of his personal history, identity, and place in the world, through the often dialectic relationship between Devonian life and hip hop culture. This is the first publication in the new Rhythm Obscura/Headz Projects series which seeks to uncover the hidden histories of music cultures in Britain. Adam de Paor-Evans is an independent creative practitioner, ethnomusicologist and spatio-cultural theorist and was previously Reader in Ethnomusicology at University of Central Lancashire, UK. His research is focused on the relationship of the non-obvious, societal and regional-rural phenomena within music cultures. He leads the scholarly research project 'Rhythm Obscura: Revealing Hidden Histories Through Ethnomusicology, Practice Research and Material Culture' and has been an actively involved in British hip hop culture since 1983. Between 1989-1992 he was a member of pioneering Devon hip hop crew Def Defiance as Project Cee. He also performs original 45-only DJ shows under the pseudonym RARE~GRILLS.