Skytrain To Nowhere

Skytrain to Nowhere is an imagination driven and esoteric volume of free-form poetry. The book documents the author's experiences, thoughts and observations while riding the skytrain at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport over the period of several weeks. Since the skytrain is only designed to transport travelers between various terminals and parking facilities at the airport, someone spending nearly 50 hours riding it purely for recreation and artistic inspirational purposes is highly unusual (to put it mildly.) Aside from occasional quirky anecdotes about various passengers, the poems mostly deal with themes of motion, the passage of time, and nostalgia. The author grapples with these issues from a retro-futurist perspective. Skytrain to Nowhere celebrates the realization that our vitality hinges on our ability to always keep moving, while recognizing we are unwilling or unable to leave some things behind on the journey.

AND YOU THOUGHT IT WAS ALL OVER Roger Crutchley’s book The Long Winding Road to Nakhon Nowhere wasn’t the ‘end of the road’ for the author. After many years working at the Bangkok Post, even after retirement readers still look forward to his musings in the Sunday edition. His column makes them smile, laugh out loud or get angry and write letters to the editor. In his new book, Beyond Nowhere, Roger has come up with more amusing reflections of his five decades in Thailand and even his early years in England. In it he also recalls experiences in China, the Philippines, the Soviet Union and other countries he visited. Read about hilarious police raids, the orangutan who tried to board a Bangkok bus, the art of how not to bargain, the singing taxi driver and the Thai food that sparked a dramatic London police raid. Then there are the ghosts that struck terror in the Northeast, the day Sir Alec Guinness spoke fluent Thai and the infamous raid on a Pattaya bridge club. And of course there are terrific tales from where it all began, his fascinating experiences at the Bangkok Post dating back to 1969. (Includes color photographs)

The legendary Douglas DC-3 airliner was a technological breakthrough that changed the course of both civilian and military aviation. In the 1930s, passenger air travel was expensive, uncomfortable, and frequently unreliable. That began to change with the appearance of the handsome, thoroughly modern DC-3, the twenty-one-passenger twin-engine propeller-driven creation of Donald Douglas and his young California company. The first production models were sold to airlines for $90,000. The price climbed to $115,000 just before the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941. The new plane quickly became a favorite of passengers the world over, and it became the first truly profitable plane for the industry. The threat posed by the coming war made the US Army realize that a military version could handle the vital troop and cargo transport capability soon to be needed. The C-47 Skytrain was born and evolved into specialized versions with many nicknames: Gooney Bird, Dakota, and Puff the Magic Dragon. In WWII, General Dwight Eisenhower was so impressed he referenced it in his famous comment: ?The four pieces of equipment the most vital to Allied success in Africa and Europe were the bulldozer, the jeep, the two-and-a-half-ton truck, and the Douglas C-47.? Skytrain celebrates the long and distinguished career of this great plane.

Luchi Ann only knows a few things about herself: she was born in a prison in Thailand. Her American mother was an inmate there. And now that her mother has died, Luchi must leave the only place she's ever known and set out into the world. Neither at home as a Thai, because of her fair skin and blond hair, nor as a foreigner, because of her knowledge of Thai life and traditions, Luchi feels as though she belongs nowhere. But as she embarks on an amazing adventure-a journey spanning continents and customs, harrowing danger and exhilarating experiences-she will find the family, and the home, she's always dreamed of. Weaving intricate elements of traditional Thailand into a modern-day fairy tale unique unto itself, Nowhere Girl is a beautifully rendered story of courage, resilience, and finding the one place where you truly belong.

What do Northtrop Frye, French dairy cows, and Historic Fort York have in common? They’re all part of Ward McBurney’s lyric and personal stories from CBC Radio’s Fresh Air, which are now available for the first time in print. Broadcasting live on Saturday mornings, with Jeff Goodes as host, Ward has been performing his own work for over four years. Sky Train collects 35 of his creative non-fiction pieces, in which Isaac Brock, steam trains, dream trains, Fred Astaire, star fortifications, a tai chi master, truss bridges, ghost soldiers, lost loves, found objects, and, not the least, the author’s pet turtle, all find a home. A spirit of companionship and urban curiosity informs these stories, which cherish the marginalia of everyday life, while revealing that the past is always just around the present corner.

Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women. Traveling on China's new "Sky Train," she celebrates Tibetan New Year with the Lhasa family whom she'd befriended decades earlier and concludes an oral-history project with women elders. As she uncovers stories of Tibetan women's courage, resourcefulness, and spiritual strength in the face of loss and hardship since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, and observes the changes wrought by the controversial new rail line in the futuristic "new Lhasa," Sam comes to embrace her own capacity for letting go, for faith, and for acceptance. Her glimpse of Tibet's past through the lens of the women - a visionary educator, a freedom fighter, a gulag survivor, and a child bride - affords her a unique perspective on the state of Tibetan culture today - in Tibet, in exile, and in the widening Tibetan diaspora. Gracefully connecting the women's poignant histories to larger cultural, political, and spiritual themes, the author comes full circle, finding wisdom and wholeness even as she acknowledges Tibet's irreversible changes.