Patrick Mullen examines how elderly people use folk traditions to engage others and pass on their wisdom and knowledge to succeeding generations. Based on interviews with nine people in their seventies and eighties who live in rural Virginia, North Carolina, and southern Ohio, this book shows how folklore enriches people's lives. Mullen places the folklore - local legends, jokes, personal-experience narratives, family history, folk medicine, planting signs, foodways, wood carving, belief systems, customs, folk architecture - within the context of the individuals' life stories and the culture of their local communities. The analysis concentrates on recurring themes in each person's folklore and the rhetorical strategies the storytellers use to interest listeners and assure that their traditions will be passed on.

If a building could speak, what would it say? What would it sound like? Would it be worth listening to? This book treats buildings as deeply human creations - built by people for people; they come to embody the dreams, imaginings and stories that take place within them. David Littlefield and Saskia Lewis argue that buildings have voices and that it is worth listening to what they have to say. By focusing on elderly structures that are the subject of reinvention, this book examines how the buildings guide architects and artists. These reinventions, or re-imaginings, are not merely examples of straightforward conservation, nor simple exercises in contrasting old and new; they represent a more sensitive, personal approach to creative reuse. The authors' accounts of more than 20 historic buildings and their interviews with the people responsible for renewing them, demonstrate that the poetic qualities of the places we inhabit are not limited to just architectural style. In this book, the voices of an abandoned cathedral, a former brothel, a stately home and a Royal Mail sorting office reveal themselves. Listening to these voices opens up a new dimension to understanding the lives and meanings of old buildings.

Provides the evidence to show it's possible to overcome problems with hearing voices and take back control of one's life.

Since the 1971 White House Conference on Aging in the United States, the need to move from religiosity into new areas such as Spiritual Assessment and Spirituality has emerged. This movement has picked up momentum among scholars, particularly in terms of research in the area of Spirituality. While spirituality as a term is employed in many new studies, this term continues to defy the quest for a single definition and method. This book is divided into three sections. In the first the authors reflect on the philosophical and theological issues presented by these terms from a variety of both cognate and practical methodological approaches. The second section offers insights from the major professions of sociology, psychology, public health, nursing and social work. The final section offers insight and assistance to researchers and authors on specific religious traditions. This book will be important for anyone working to develop such practical tools as spiritual assessment forms to those who engage in more formal scholarly investigation.

"The new year was already some hours old, but the world to which it had come was still dark. Dark with a curious obscurity, that was absolutely opaque yet faintly luminous, because of the white fog which lay on all things and hid them from the stars; for the sky above was clear, cold, almost frosty. That was why the fog, born, not of cool vapour seeking for cloud life among the winds of heaven, but of hot smoke loving the warmth of dust and ashes, clung so closely to the earth; to its birthplace. It was an acrid, bitter smoke, not even due to the dead hearthfires of a dead day, since they--like all else pertaining to the domestic life of India--give small outward sign of existence, but to the smouldering piles of litter and refuse which are lit every evening upon the outskirts of human habitation. Dull heaps with a minimum of fire, a maximum of smoke, where the humanity which has produced the litter, the refuse, gathers for gossip or for warmth. Even in the fields beyond the multitude of men, where some long-limbed peasant, watching his hope of harvest, dozes by a solitary fire, this same smoke rises in a solid column, until--beaten down by the colder moister air above--it drifts sideways to spread like a vast cobweb over the dew-set carpet of green corn. ... --Taken from prologue

The Introspective Art of Mark Twain is a major new assessment of a towering American writer. Seeking to trace the development of Mark Twain's imagination, Douglas Anderson begins near the end of Twain's life, with the long dialogue What Is Man? that Twain published anonymously in 1906. In Twain's view, the little-read What Is Man? lies at the heart of his creative life. It is the central aesthetic testament that he employed to tell the story of his artistic evolution. Anderson follows the contours of that story as it unfolds over Twain's career. The portrait that emerges addresses the full scope of Twain's achievement, drawing on his autobiographical and travel writings, as well as the published and unpublished works of fiction that are by now deeply embedded in the world literary canon. “Steer by the river in your head,” Mark Twain's master pilot, Horace Bixby, once advised him, when the opaque atmosphere of the outer world made it impossible to see the actual Mississippi through which Twain was trying to guide his steamboat. For the purposes of this book, the river in one's head is not a mental construct of the physical world but the riverine networks of consciousness itself: the river that is the mind. The detailed discussions of individual books that structure each chapter direct the attention of Mark Twain's students and admirers, through inward rather than outward channels, toward a fuller appreciation for his legacy.

This practical workbook supports teachers seeking to sensitively understand and respond to the opinions and perceptions of critical stakeholders in student learning and development; pupil voice, parent voice, and professional voice are introduced and explored. A wide range of expert educator and academic contributors ensure that diverse voices are meaningfully understood, with chapters placing an emphasis on minority and traditionally marginalised groups, including SEND, LGBTQIA+, and Global Majority students. The workbook advocates a clear and inclusive ethos and demonstrates how voice work can help to decolonise the curriculum, promote a positive LGBTQIA+ friendly school climate, and value pupil involvement. Moments for personal reflection, activities, and action plans allow practitioners to consider the role they play in facilitating the effective inclusion of those not normally involved in knowledge construction and decision-making processes. Blending key theory with practical strategies and takeaways, this workbook is an essential tool for practising primary and secondary teachers and teaching assistants, as well as educational psychologists, school counsellors, and other educational professionals interested in promoting inclusive voice practices.

A contemporary oral history documenting what Native Americans from 16 different tribal nations say about themselves and the world around them.