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586 Search Results for "george ellison"
The art of choosing the next book
Published: 2010-03-31 15:01:00Of late, we’ve been considering books. The feedback (mostly email) from readers to recent columns regarding books in general, book shelving strategies, bookplates, home libraries, favorite books, and so on, has been instructive. Before we move on to th...
Read MorePerfecting the art of shelving books
Published: 2010-02-24 17:50:00Some readers might recall that three weeks ago — in a column about relocating my long lost inscribed copy of James Still’s “Hounds on the Mountain” — I mentioned in passing that the book had reappeared as I was in the process of reorganizing my...
Read MoreTopography and language
Published: 2010-02-17 17:10:00I enjoy using variants on the phrase “lay of the land.” One can “get the lay of the land” in a number of ways. If your hiking partner says that he or she is “going on ahead to get the lay of the land,” that’s one thing; on the other hand, i...
Read MoreA taste of Appalachian poetry
Published: 2010-02-10 17:04:00This past weekend was given over to reorganizing the books in my home library. In the process, I relocated a volume of poems I had feared was long lost. My favorite “Appalachian” poets would be Robert Morgan, Kay Stripling Byer, and James Still. Morg...
Read MoreSimple signs of the evergreen
Published: 2010-02-03 15:01:00You can almost smell the word “evergreen.” The word is at once one of the most aptly descriptive and highly evocative botanical terms. Simply reading or hearing it conjures up a mix of personal associations with particular landscapes. Evergreens are ...
Read MoreDavis was a poetic nature writer
Published: 2010-01-27 17:37:00The professional career of biologist Millard C. (“Bill”) Davis — who was born in 1930 in Utica, N.Y., and now resides in Dunnellon, Fla. – included stints as a teacher and editor in various capacities. He has been president of the American Nature...
Read MoreA look at John Preston Arthur
Published: 2010-01-20 16:12:00One of my favorite accounts of this region’s varied history is provided by John Preston Arthur, who published his 659-page volume titled Western North Carolina: A History (From 1730 to 1913) in 1914. Originally published by The Edward Buncombe Chapter ...
Read MoreMasters of the night sky
Published: 2010-01-13 16:12:00The New Year has arrived and the great horned owls have commenced their annual “singing” along the dark ridges. These birds don’t sing, of course, in the manner of true songbirds like warblers and orioles — but the quick cadence of four or five h...
Read MoreAspects of life from a rural cove
Published: 2010-01-06 15:43:00This marks my tenth year of writing a weekly Back Then column for The Smoky Mountain News. In all that time I have belabored neither editors nor readers with my poetry. Brace yourselves. The time has come. It is winter and it is cold and this is when I r...
Read MoreThe colors of winter
Published: 2009-12-30 15:54:30For my wife, Elizabeth, and me, winter doesn’t arrive until the first of each year. From now until spring is our finest season. She doesn’t have to keep her gallery-studio on the town square in Bryson City open all the time. And I don’t have to tra...
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