Bøker i Callender Nature-serien

THIRD EDITION January 2023¿¿BIRDS AND HUMANS: WHO ARE WE ?What are birds? Are they really today's dinosaurs as against us mammals and how does their evolution compare with that of humans and their lifestyle, parenting, tools, travelling and intelligence - better or worse? Was it they who first discovered music and then taught us - and do they too have an aesthetic sense and a joy in play? What about the art of birds and - well, how many poems or proverbs about birds do you know? This beautifully argued and illustrated book gives some startling answers. It contends, most unusually, that it is time for us to revise the widespread assumption, most distinctly expressed in Harari's magnificent best-selling Sapiens and Homo dues, that we humans are the Lords of the Earth. Rather, Callender argues, it is for humans, not after all so unlike birds, to share the guardianship of our precious world with this wonderful parallel species. We have our gifts too, but birds have the advantage of many more millions of years and climate changes here in which to learn and survive as highly intelligent and generous guardians of our precious earth.David Campbell Callender is a pen name of the anthropologist Ruth Finnegan.

In shamanism, there are two paths. The first always occurs involuntarily and unexpectedly when one has been chosen by an invisible entity (spirit, ancestor or master of the forest), most often during a traumatic event (illness, accident or Near Death Experience). However, the second path requires that one expresses his will to develop his powers with master shamans by means of rituals and initiation trials. For anyone who has never had the opportunity to be challenged by supernatural entities, the second path not only allows to meet them in order to ask for a spiritual development, but also to recover shamanic powers apparently lost. This is the path that Fermín followed during seven years of dieting and learning incantations, to 'see' and 'extract' diseases of the body, and even travel as a jaguar in unsuspected worlds.

I have no idea what started me on this book. But I'm glad I did and hope you will be too.It's true that I'd been walking on grass and seeing it and touching it just about every day of my life. But I had just never thought about it - about how it is everywhere, grows back whatever you do, delights us - even in a way holds our beautiful planet together, a foundation for nature and art and humanity.Once started I couldn't stop. Grass, that humble weed, is amazing.Even it's evolution is fascinating - not 'simple' at all as I'd thought - and covers hundreds of different species, including (could you have guessed?) bamboo and sugarcane, and we couldn't live or feed ourselves without it. And then there is all the art and symbolism and poetry around grass in the imagination of our thoughts.Where could it have come from, this miraculous part of earthly life? We may never learn the answer to that mystery, but at least we can track some of its adventures.This volume aims to give some kind of introduction to the many many dimensions of this miraculous weed of ours. For this reason, none of the accounts can go very deep and many aspects remain to be uncovered (it left to you, if you so wish, to winkle out further information from the many sources listed at the end and elsewhere).Despite its introductory nature however I hope that you enjoy reading this story as much as we have both enjoyed discovering it.