Books
Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg Way: 18th-Century Methods for Today's Organic Gardeners
From the nation's foremost historical preservation site comes a guide to traditional—and still relevant—methods and advice for planting and tending a productive vegetable garden
In a colonial-style garden, the broccoli is purple and "turkey" cucumbers grow to three feet long; oiled paper predates plastic for sheltering spring plants; and fermenting manure warms the seedlings. Finding inspiration and value in 18th-century plants, tools, and techniques, the gardeners at Colonial Williamsburg have discovered that these traditional vegetable-growing methods are perfectly at home in today's modern organic gardens. After all, in the 18th century, organic gardening was the only type of gardening and local produce the only produce available.
Disappearing Highway:
A draft dodger's diary
Disappearing Highway, a draft dodger’s diary is a travelog told by a 20-year-old hitchhiking between Southern California and Northern Idaho to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War.
Most of the incidents in this novel are based on real life, mostly, except my memory’s not what it used to be and I tend to exaggerate so this story is best described as semi-autobiographical, historical fiction. The beginning and the end are factually correct. My birthday is February 13, 1951 and, in 1970, my draft lottery number was 13. I evaded induction by being imprisoned when I received my notice to report. The “in between” tales are based on hitch hiking trips I took between 1968 and 1974. Most episodes, such as the Mt. Angel nunnery incident and the resulting court case, happened pretty much the way they are recorded. On the other hand, I was never kidnapped by the Black Liberation Army and the whole story is based on one terrifying night during the Watts riot when I was 14 years old.
Woven into these roadside encounters is a chronicle of America in transition in the early 1970’s. It is an adventure story and a panorama of a changing world portrayed by the people he meets and his recollections of growing up in Southern California in the 1960’s.
Isinwood: The BeeRider Chronicles
This fantasy novel began as an epic poem while I was studying English Literature at North Idaho College. Over time, it became a bedtime story and I finally wrote it down in 1990. Isinwood is home to a race of stingless Bees and their riders who face an ancient foe; Locustdrivers, long thought to be extinct, have reappeared and threaten the hives of Isinwood with annihilation. In order to fight the horde, the Beeriders must return Sting to Isinwood; a legendary sword carried by King teralinden in the first Locustdriver War (in a time before Queens flew in Isinwood) that has long vanished into legend.
Two riders set out on a quest to find the sword. In separate journeys they explore the known world and, along the way, find not only the weapon to confront the horde, but the allies to help them face the impossible odds presented by Locustdrivers, led by deathshead, king of the Roachcrawlers and master of Earthspeak. In their travels they encounter Waspwarriors, Manitismonks, Spiderweavers, Stickwalkers, Waterstriders, Robberfliers and many, many other members of the arthropod phylum in roles that imitate their real life counterparts.
I have gardened for most of my life and it is in the garden that I learned to appreciate these entomological wonders that, like the Insecta encountered in the Beerider Chronicles, are sometimes friends and sometimes foes.
