Ants Dust And Flies In My Coffee

Andrew and Joanne's travelogue of their 23 month, 19,000 km Recumbent tricycle trip around Australia.

A poem for every day of the leap year, drawn from the fantastical, the future and the fallout from real life—and written for dreamers everywhere. While most are set in worlds of imagination, there are a few whose roots are buried deep in the disappointments of the real. So, if trolls, fairies, dragons, recovering from workplace bullies, and flying with starships, or dealing with regrets and finding hope—always finding hope—are your thing, then welcome to the wanderings of my mind.

Tribesmen murdered in Papua New Guinea. A shaman brutally killed in the Amazon. Mercenary commandos infiltrating biolabs across the globe. Billionaire Umberto Morton will stop at nothing to assure he is the first to patent the Fountain of Youth. He has transformed his worldwide pharmaceutical empire to a single effort; he calls it the Methuselah Project. Welcome to Madagascar: land of exotic spiders, land leeches, jumping rats, crocodiles, hissing cockroaches, and the mysterious predator called the fossa. And maybe, land that is hiding a secret elixir, the Fountain of Youth. Harvard entomologist, Trygve Lindstrom, has accepted Morton’s generous six-month sabbatical to a remote village in Madagascar. For centuries, mariner’s reports and missionary accounts claim that these reclusive villagers, the Rock People, may have found the secret to youth and longevity. Lindstrom scoffs at the tales, but leaps at a chance to collect and study rare bugs. In time, he is accepted by the villagers, especially the children who joyfully accompany him on his collecting journeys. Then the unthinkable happens. Morton sends two armed commandoes to Madagascar. Lindstrom is determined to protect his beloved villagers and their sacred secret. But what can he do against armed intruders?

Karl Zinsmeister's Boots on the Ground includes 32 color photographs taken by the author during the month he was embedded with the 82nd in Kuwait and Iraq. This is a riveting account of the war in Iraq moving north with the 82nd Airborne. Units of the 82nd depart Kuwait and convoy to Iraq's Tallil Air Base en route to night-and-day battles within the major city of Samawah and its intact bridges across the Euphrates. Boots on the Ground quickly becomes an action-filled microcosm of the new kinds of ultramodern war fighting showcased in the overall battle for Iraq. At the same time it remains specific to the daily travails of the soldiers. Karl Zinsmeister, a frontline reporter who traveled with the 82nd, vividly conveys the careful planning and technical wizardry that go into today's warfare, even local firefights, and he brings to life the constant air-ground interactions that are the great innovation of modern precision combat. What exactly does it feel like to travel with a spirited body of fighting men? To come under fire? To cope with the battlefield stresses of sleep-deprivation, and a steady diet of field rations for weeks on end? Readers of this day-to-day diary are left with not only a flashing sequence of strong mental images, but also a notion of the sounds and smells and physical sensations that make modern military action unforgettable. Ultimately, Boots on the Ground is a human story: a moving portrayal of the powerful bonds of affection, trust, fear, and dedication that bind real soldiers involved in battle. There are unexpected elements: The humor that bubbles up amidst dangerous fighting. The pathos of a badly wounded young boy. The affection openly exhibited by many American soldiers--love of country, love of family and hometown, love of each other. This is a true-life tale of superbly trained men in extraordinary circumstances, packed with concrete detail, often surpassing fiction for sheer drama.