The Hopes of Snakes: And Other Tales from the Urban Landscape.THE HOPES OF SNAKES: And Other Tales from the Urban Landscape LISA The first personal computer to include integrated software and use a graphical interface. Modeled after the Xerox Star and introduced in 1983 by Apple, it was ahead of its time, but never caught on due to its $10,000 price and slow speed. COUTURIER This collection of essays follows Couturier through a lifetime of her communion with nature in, of all places, Manhattan and the suburbs of Washington D.C. Her lyrical prose recounts her varied encounters with animal life, from unwillingly sharing an apartment with cockroaches cockroaches insects which may carry Salmonella spp. in their gut and play a part in the spread of the disease. to observing pigeons and mice on, in, and around her homes to marveling at peregrine falcons living not on the rocky faces of cliffs but along the glass faces of skyscrapers. Manhattan had no shortage of wildlife, Couturier writes, but even more abounded at her home along the Potomac River Potomac River River, east-central U.S. Rising in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, it is about 287 mi (462 km) long. It flows southeast through the District of Columbia into Chesapeake Bay. It is navigable by large vessels to Washington, D.C. outside Washington, D.C., and in the converted farmlands and fields of suburban Maryland and Virginia. She ponders the plight of irrationally detested de·test tr.v. de·test·ed, de·test·ing, de·tests To dislike intensely; abhor. [French détester, from Latin d crows roosting in shopping center shopping center, a concentration of retail, service, and entertainment enterprises designed to serve the surrounding region. The modern shopping center differs from its antecedents—bazaars and marketplaces—in that the shops are usually amalgamated into parking lots and of other creatures, such as geese, foxes, and snakes, struggling to survive under human influence. These poetic tales reveal nature's indelible thumbprint on urban environments and on the author's personal life. Beacon Press, 2005, 160 p., hardcover, $23.00. |
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