Caring For The People Of The Clouds

In rural Mexico, people often say that Alzheimer’s does not exist. “People do not have Alzheimer’s because they don’t need to worry,” said one Oaxacan, explaining that locals lack the stresses that people face “over there”—that is, in the modern world. Alzheimer’s and related dementias carry a stigma. In contrast to the way elders are revered for remembering local traditions, dementia symbolizes how modern families have forgotten the communal values that bring them together. In Caring for the People of the Clouds, psychologist Jonathan Yahalom provides an emotionally evocative, story-rich analysis of family caregiving for Oaxacan elders living with dementia. Based on his extensive research in a Zapotec community, Yahalom presents the conflicted experience of providing care in a setting where illness is steeped in stigma and locals are concerned about social cohesion. Traditionally, the Zapotec, or “people of the clouds,” respected their elders and venerated their ancestors. Dementia reveals the difficulty of upholding those ideals today. Yahalom looks at how dementia is understood in a medically pluralist landscape, how it is treated in a setting marked by social tension, and how caregivers endure challenges among their families and the broader community. Yahalom argues that caregiving involves more than just a response to human dependency; it is central to regenerating local values and family relationships threatened by broader social change. In so doing, the author bridges concepts in mental health with theory from medical anthropology. Unique in its interdisciplinary approach, this book advances theory pertaining to cross-cultural psychology and develops anthropological insights about how aging, dementia, and caregiving disclose the intimacies of family life in Oaxaca.

In rural Mexico, people often say that Alzheimer’s does not exist. “People do not have Alzheimer’s because they don’t need to worry,” said one Oaxacan, explaining that locals lack the stresses that people face “over there”—that is, in the modern world. Alzheimer’s and related dementias carry a stigma. In contrast to the way elders are revered for remembering local traditions, dementia symbolizes how modern families have forgotten the communal values that bring them together. In Caring for the People of the Clouds, psychologist Jonathan Yahalom provides an emotionally evocative, story-rich analysis of family caregiving for Oaxacan elders living with dementia. Based on his extensive research in a Zapotec community, Yahalom presents the conflicted experience of providing care in a setting where illness is steeped in stigma and locals are concerned about social cohesion. Traditionally, the Zapotec, or “people of the clouds,” respected their elders and venerated their ancestors. Dementia reveals the difficulty of upholding those ideals today. Yahalom looks at how dementia is understood in a medically pluralist landscape, how it is treated in a setting marked by social tension, and how caregivers endure challenges among their families and the broader community. Yahalom argues that caregiving involves more than just a response to human dependency; it is central to regenerating local values and family relationships threatened by broader social change. In so doing, the author bridges concepts in mental health with theory from medical anthropology. Unique in its interdisciplinary approach, this book advances theory pertaining to cross-cultural psychology and develops anthropological insights about how aging, dementia, and caregiving disclose the intimacies of family life in Oaxaca.

A novella set in post–climate disaster Alberta; a woman infected with a mysterious parasite must choose whether to pursue a rare opportunity far from home or stay and help rebuild her community The world is nothing like it once was: climate disasters have wracked the continent, causing food shortages, ending industry, and leaving little behind. Then came Cad, mysterious mind-altering fungi that invade the bodies of the now scattered citizenry. Reid, a young woman who carries this parasite, has been given a chance to get away — to move to one of the last remnants of pre-disaster society — but she can’t bring herself to abandon her mother and the community that relies on her. When she’s offered a coveted place on a dangerous and profitable mission, she jumps at the opportunity to set her family up for life, but how can Reid ask people to put their trust in her when she can’t even trust her own mind? With keen insight and biting prose, Premee Mohamed delivers a deeply personal tale in this post-apocalyptic hopepunk novella that reflects on the meaning of community and asks what we owe to those who have lifted us up.

From one of India’s most accomplished writers, an illuminating novel about identity, family, and mythology set in a rapidly changing, modern India. Recently divorced psychotherapist Farhad Billimoria realizes he will never find love again in Bombay and prepares for a move to San Francisco. On a farewell tour throughout the city, his mind crackles with bittersweet memories and giddy dreams. But is love about to bloom for Farhad just as he has given up on the city? And if it does, will he bring to it the man that he is, or the one he wants to become? Elsewhere in Bombay, the tribal youth Rabi remains stuck as the caretaker to his parents, two ailing and cranky old Brahmins. Rabi comes from the remote Cloud people of eastern India, a sky-watching tribe that observes the Cloudmaker—the mercurial God who drifts and muses in the skies—and that is dragged into the modern world when a mining company invades their sacred mountain. Rabi’s mentor Bhagaban, a forward-thinking filmmaker, leads their resistance. But will Rabi follow Bhagaban or his parents, who reassert a golden Indian past? From one of India’s most celebrated young writers, Clouds illuminates the inner lives of characters forging their own paths in the great metropolis and shows a vast, prismatic portrait of modern India in all its tumult and glory.

Historians and archaeologists, suggest Keith Muscutt, must have done an excellent job of recording the achievements of great pre-Columbian civilisations such as that of the Inca, which at its height covered an area the size of its Roman counterpart. They have done less well in understanding the histories of the empires that came before, the local strongholds and fiefdoms swallowed up by the mighty civilisations that the Europeans encountered. Muscutt takes us into the heart of one such ancient civilisation, the Chachapoya, nestled in the high Andes of far eastern Peru. The area is remote and nearly inaccessible (one conquistador wrote that 'the natural difficulty of the countryside is so rugged that on some roads the Indians slide down great ropes a distance of eight or ten times the height of a man, for there is no other way of advancing') for which reason scholars have been late in coming to it. Muscutt's heavily illustrated, inviting text helps place the Chachapoya empire in the larger context of Andean prehistory.

For a wealth of information on the book, the author and the research that went into this book, visit www.horsethatleaps.com. Two epic journeys along the Silk Road, past and present, offer a riveting and cautionary tale about the breathtaking rise of China. On July 6, 1906, Baron Gustaf Mannerheim boarded the midnight train from St. Petersburg, charged by Czar Nicholas ii to secretly collect intelligence on the Qing Dynasty’s sweeping reforms that were radically transforming China. The last czarist agent in the so-called Great Game, Mannerheim chronicled almost every facet of China’s modernization, from education reform and foreign investment to Tibet’s struggle for independence. On July 6, 2006, writer Eric Enno Tamm boards that same train, intent on following in Mannerheim’s footsteps. Initially banned from China, Tamm devises a cover and retraces Mannerheim’s route across the Silk Road, discovering both eerie similarities and seismic differences between the Middle Kingdoms of today and a century ago. Along the way, Tamm offers piercing insights into China’s past that raise troubling questions about its future. Can the Communist Party truly open China to the outside world yet keep Western ideas such as democracy and freedom at bay, just as Qing officials mistakenly believed? What can reform during the late Qing Dynasty teach us about the spectacular transformation of China today? “Study the past if you would divine the future,” wrote Confucius. Tamm’s quest turns out to be a cautionary tale.

DAVID GREENBERG has directed Grammy-nominated music videos, scripted the platinum selling KISS EXPOSED for Paul & Gene, product managed Yoko, Ringo, Devo and more. He's now a Marketing Director for jazz's crème de la crème. Still the bulk of his lyrics lay unsung; deadbeats who should be out making the big bucks, or more importantly, changing millions of lives the world over. These days he'd be grateful for pennies on the dollar and a few listeners given a good chuckle. Only three lyricals have music. Why? As Cary Baker, of conqueroo noted, "David never found his Elton John to his Bernie Taupin." That's not to puff up the quality of the collection to the size of an alarmed blowfish, insinuating Greenberg is a Bernie Taupin, a Hal David, a Captain Beefheart--but even they weren't icons when they first started. BTW, which three lyrics? Buy the MUD FOLIO and find out. Get your copy today and start the rest of your music career on a straight path to hitdom. Or at least jump start Greenberg's.

In her extraordinary novels Into the Wilderness and Dawn on a Distant Shore, award-winning writer Sara Donati deftly captured the vast, untamed wilderness of late-eighteenth-century New York and the trials and triumphs of the Bonner family. Now Donati takes on a new and often overlooked chapter in our nation’s past--and in the life of the spirited Bonners--as their oldest daughter, the brave and beautiful Hannah, comes of age with a challenge that will change her forever. Masterfully told, this passionate story is a moving tribute to a resilient, adventurous family and a people poised at the brink of a new century. It is the spring of 1802, and the village of Paradise is still reeling from the typhoid epidemic of the previous summer. Elizabeth and Nathaniel Bonner have lost their two-year-old son, Hannah’s half brother Robbie, but they struggle on as always: the men in the forests, the twins Lily and Daniel in Elizabeth’s school, and Hannah as a doctor in training, apprenticed to Richard Todd. Hannah is descended from healers on both sides--one Scots grandmother and one Mohawk--and her reputation as a skilled healer in her own right is growing. After a long night spent attending to a birth, Elizabeth and Hannah encounter an escaped slave hiding on the mountain. She calls herself Selah Voyager, and she is looking for Curiosity Freeman--a former slave herself, one of the village’s wisest women and Elizabeth’s closest friend. The Bonners take Selah, desperately ill, to Lake in the Clouds to care for her, and with that simple act they are drawn into the secret life that Curiosity and Galileo Freeman and their grown children have been leading for almost ten years. The Bonners will do what they must to protect the Freemans, just as Hannah will protect her patient, who presents more than one kind of challenge. For a bounty hunter is afoot--Hannah’s childhood friend and first love, Liam Kirby. While Elizabeth and Nathaniel undertake a treacherous journey through the endless forests to bring Selah to safety in the north, Hannah embarks on a very different journey to New-York City, with two goals: to learn the secrets of vaccination against smallpox, a disease that threatens Paradise, and to find out what she can about Liam’s immediate past and what caused him to change so drastically from the boy she once loved. The obstacles she faces as a woman and a Mohawk make her confront questions long avoided about her place in the world. Those questions follow her back to Paradise, where she finds that the medical miracle she brings with her will not cure prejudice or superstition, nor can it solve the problem of slavery. No sooner have the Bonners begun to rebound from their losses--old and new--than they find themselves confronted by more than one old enemy in a battle that will test the strength of their love for one another. Hannah faces the decision she has always dreaded: will she make a life for herself in a white world, or among her mother’s people?