Local Voices
The government of Theos prohibits contact with Earth, having deemed it a hostile and unevolved planet of inhabitants. Two of their leading scientists have worked for years to prove Theosians can successfully survive on Earth, but not before a deadly and fatal explosion takes their lives. Their son, a young, scientific phenom, vows to defend his parents' theories as he disobeys law and escapes his planet, plummeting his craft toward Earth's surface with his ex-girlfriend secretly stowed away.
On Earth, their personality differences erupt causing them to live separate lives. However, an unknown atmospheric anomaly, results in a break-down in body strength, requiring them to meet yearly to perform a regenerative ritual for survival. Despite each being 17 years of age, one chooses to regress to high school for fun, games and no responsibilities, while the other takes on the identity of a college freshman, for a life of logic and pure reason.
Despite their differences, they each struggle to acclimate and find themselves up against deadly illness and evil forces, aimed at exposing their secret existence. But nothing poses a greater threat than a battle against the heart.
A gardener tends her vegetables and flowers while devising a way to manage her burgeoning chipmunk problem. A daughter pens a letter to her dead father. Jesus saunters into hot yoga and dazzles the assembled practitioners. Three sisters play on their swing set in the middle of the night. In these-and other-poems from Just the Girls: A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies; A Drift of Honeybees, women support, cheer, challenge, and, ultimately, sustain each other. Just the Girls celebrates women and what it means to be connected to the female whole.
"We're in the presence of a poet with an ear for how language shapes our worlds, and an eye alert to the details that make those worlds real to us. What a splendid, moving collection of lyrics!" Dr. Steven Reese, authorExcentrica: Notes on the Text
"Anderson gives our everyday lives a voice that is rich and cuts to the quick. She has a gift for articulating the beauties and mysteries of our lives in poetry that will leave you wanting more." Diane Laney Fitzpatrick, author and social media strategist
"These poems are a poignant catalog of what we learn from girls and women, inspiration and cautionary tale, and our complicated memories of domestic life." Karen Schubert, author of The Compost Reader
In this enchanting and unforgettable memoir, Judi Lifton captures her luminous years growing up in a small Minnesota town where childhood was a time to read a book, ride your bike, explore the neighborhood and let your mind shift through unexpected discoveries. Lifton's memories are creatively presented as letters written by her fourteen-year-old self to a beloved and terminally ill friend who frequently travelled to her hometown, Chief White Feather, an America Indian storyteller/singer and advocate for Indian rights. In reality, the letters were "letters of the heart," thus never written down until rendered now in sepia-tone prose that glistens with fondness for family and friends, nostalgia for the simple pleasures of childhood in the 50s, and the heartache of loneliness and loss. This is a story that will stay with you for a long time.
They've been listening for longer than you think. A new history reveals how--and why.
Wiretapping is nearly as old as electronic communications. Telegraph operators intercepted enemy messages during the Civil War. Law enforcement agencies were listening to private telephone calls as early as 1895. Communications firms have assisted government eavesdropping programs since the early twentieth century--and they have spied on their own customers too. Such breaches of privacy once provoked outrage, but today most Americans have resigned themselves to constant electronic monitoring. How did we get from there to here? In The Listeners, Brian Hochman shows how the wiretap evolved from a specialized intelligence-gathering tool to a mundane fact of life. He explores the origins of wiretapping in military campaigns and criminal confidence games and tracks the use of telephone taps in the US government's wars on alcohol, communism, terrorism, and crime. While high-profile eavesdropping scandals fueled public debates about national security, crime control, and the rights and liberties of individuals, wiretapping became a routine surveillance tactic for private businesses and police agencies alike. From wayward lovers to foreign spies, from private detectives to public officials, and from the silver screen to the Supreme Court, The Listeners traces the long and surprising history of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping in the United States. Along the way, Brian Hochman considers how earlier generations of Americans confronted threats to privacy that now seem more urgent than ever.