At Home In The Hills

To most outsiders, the hills of the Scottish Borders are a bleak and foreboding space - usually made to represent the stigmatized Other, Ad Finis, by the centers of power in Edinburgh, London, and Brussels. At a time when globalization seems to threaten our sense of place, people of the Scottish borderlands provide a vivid case study of how the being-in-place is central to the sense of self and identity. Since the end of the thirteenth century, people living in the Scottish Border hills have engaged in armed raiding on the frontier with England, developed capitalist sheep farming in the newly united kingdom of Great Britain, and are struggling to maintain their family farms in one of the marginal agricultural rural regions of the European Community. Throughout their history, sheep farmers living in these hills have established an abiding sense of place in which family and farm have become refractions of each other. Adopting a phenomenological perspective, this book concentrates on the contemporary farming practices - shepherding, selling lambs and rams at auctions - as well as family and class relations through which hill sheep fuse people, place, and way of life to create this sense of being-at-home in the hills.

“A graceful, intelligent, and very funny chronicle of a large, extended family beneath one capacious roof.” –The New York Times Book Review While always well-stocked with clean sheets, Lily Hill is not expecting visitors. At least not in the numbers that descend upon her genteely dilapidated New England ancestral home in the summer of ’89. Brother Harvey arrives first, thrice-widowed and eager for company; then perennially self-dramatizing niece Ginger and her teenaged daughter Betsy; then Alden, just laid-off from Wall Street, with his wife Becky, and their rowdy brood of four . . . As summer fades into fall, it becomes clear that no one intends to leave. But just as Lily’s industrious hospitality gives way to a somewhat strained domestic routine, the Hill clan must face new challenges together. Brimming with wit and a compendium of Yankee curiosities, The Hills at Home is an irresistible modern take on an old-fashioned comedy of manners.

One of more than twenty-five first cousins who grew up together in the Ozark Mountains, Marilyn Michel Whetstone reveals in Our Home in the Hills how she experienced first-hand the joy and comfort of being part of a large, close-knit family. In a collection of true stories and family recipes, Whetstone shares anecdotes that provide insight into her life growing up in the popular resort mecca of the Midwest, Rockaway Beach, during the 1950’s and 1960’s and the lives of guests who visited the family resort during that time. While transporting others on a nostalgic trip back to a simpler time, Whetstone details how unselfish acts of sacrifice and kindness promoted healthy and lasting bonds among relatives and friends. She shares the ups and downs in her teenage relationships and offers a glimpse into her close walk with Jesus Christ. Included are recipes that have been passed down in her family for more than a hundred years, providing a backdrop to her delightful stories. “These inspired stories of faith, family, friends, and community will touch your heart. They evoke memories of the joy and blessing of my own growing up years in Ozark Mountain Country.” —Edd Akers, Mayor, City of Branson

To most outsiders, the hills of the Scottish Borders are a bleak and foreboding space - usually made to represent the stigmatized Other, Ad Finis, by the centers of power in Edinburgh, London, and Brussels. At a time when globalization seems to threaten our sense of place, people of the Scottish borderlands provide a vivid case study of how the being-in-place is central to the sense of self and identity. Since the end of the thirteenth century, people living in the Scottish Border hills have engaged in armed raiding on the frontier with England, developed capitalist sheep farming in the newly united kingdom of Great Britain, and are struggling to maintain their family farms in one of the marginal agricultural rural regions of the European Community. Throughout their history, sheep farmers living in these hills have established an abiding sense of place in which family and farm have become refractions of each other. Adopting a phenomenological perspective, this book concentrates on the contemporary farming practices - shepherding, selling lambs and rams at auctions - as well as family and class relations through which hill sheep fuse people, place, and way of life to create this sense of being-at-home in the hills.

"When Lillian Beckwith advertised for a secluded place in the country, she received a letter with the following unusual description of an isolated Hebridean croft: 'Surely it's that quiet even the sheeps themselves on the hills is lonely and as to the sea it's that near as I use it myself everyday for the refusals...' Her curiosity aroused, Beckwith took up the invitation. This is the comic and enchanting story of the strange rest cure that followed and her efforts to adapt to a completely different way of life."--Back cover.

Earning its author a third nomination for the Nobel Prize, this tale centers on a crane colony arriving at its breeding ground to play out a delicate drama, ending with the rarely observed ceremony of the ritual dance. All is observed by a transfixed child who has frozen into his background and become a piece of nature himself. With a kind of cinematic impressionism, this novel voyages back to episodes from childhood, adolescence, and maturity as well as conducts speculative forays into the unknown. Unfolding in a series of delicate sketches that record the changing moods of human experience, this story is at once pervaded by a sense of melancholy and a sensuous appreciation of nature. A profound and beautiful book, it is the summation of a literary artist's first-hand experience and observation of rural life—of landscape and people.

A great romance and a life with horses form the lynchpins around which Imtiaz Fiona Griffiths’ nostalgic memoir revolves. Coming along for the ride, we have guest appearances by dodgy bookmakers, fast racehorses, slow tortoises, gregarious Jesuits, and a host of other fascinating characters. Griffiths’ story takes us on a journey through pre and post-independence India: from her childhood spent in railway “hill stations”; to adventures in the horse-racing world of Calcutta in the 1950’s and 1960’s; to building her dream racehorse stud farm with her husband Mike in the hills of rural Bihar. A final transition to life in Canada forms the bookend to a joyous and poignant read.

Part memoir, part adventure story, and part study of the natural world, this is an evocative and vividly written memoir of a childhood on a remote sheep farm in Wales.