Search

The second edition of this text is updated and contains new case studies on the volcanic eruption at Montserrat, flooding in the UK and recent hurricanes.

Originally published in 1832 and revised in 1851, Swallow Barn, John Pendleton Kennedy’s novel of antebellum life on a tidewater Virginia plantation, was described by its author as “variously and interchangeably partaking of the complexion of a book of travels, a diary, a collection of letters, a drama, and a history.” Swallow Barn has returned from oblivion many times in the past 150 years, in part because it resists categorization and retains its originality. It is a novel that is not a novel, written by a man who was and was not a southerner or even, by his own reckoning, a writer. Swallow Barn began as a series of letters written by a Mark Littleton (Kennedy) to his hometown neighbor, Zachary Huddlestone of Preston Ridge, New York. Littleton, visiting his Virginia relatives at their farm called Swallow Barn, on the James River not far from Richmond, told his friend that he would write a “full, true and particular account of all my doings, or rather my seeings and thinkings” while he was among his genial relatives. But Kennedy soon dropped the pose of letter writer and devoted successive chapters to sketches of Virginia country life. In choosing to write about the “manners” of his own region, he won not only esteem as an American author but recognition for a way of life toward which an open hostility was developing in the North. Lucinda MacKethan’s introduction to this edition considers biographical information and the cultural and literary forces that operated to make Swallow Barn a unique as well as a representative product of its period. MacKethan also discusses Kennedy’s design for the novel, the ideological and artistic strategies that governed the choices and changes he made as he created what is now regarded as one of the most important fictional portrayals of plantation society by one intimately involved in that place and time.

"Sea Drift" is a 2014 Scars Publications cc&d magazine (249.8, a 21 year bonus anniversary issue/book) poetry and short story book by assorted writers and artists. "Children, Churches and Daddies" (AKA cc&d, subtitle "the UN-religios, NON-family oriented literary and art magazine) has been printed in many forms since it's inception in 1994, but starting in 2014 cc&d is being released every other month as a 6"x9" perfect-bound paperback book, with not only it's usual ISSN# (ISSN# 1068-5154), but also an ISBN#. In honor of the 2014 ISBN# issue/book releases, all issues now carry a title to accompany the new format, reflecting the writing inside the book and the cover design.This bonus 2014 21 year anniversary release issue/book from cc&d highlights the 19 year anniversary issue of cc&d (v233), plus bonus 2014 poetry literally about children, churches and daddies. Cover art from this magazine / book is from the original v233 magazine cover, of a stack of crabs fo sale at the Fisherman's Wharf - San Francisco's Historical Fishing District, in honor of cancer being the astrological sign that start during the anniversary month for cc&d (photographed 9/13/09). Writers and artists in this book include S. Progress, Brian Looney, David Thompson, Michael Ceraolo, W. Donta Andrews, Holly Day, Frank De Canio, John Newmark, R. N. Taber, Joseph Hart, Lily Gardner, I.B. Rad, CEE, Dan Fitzgerald, Dana Stamps, II, Oz Hardwick, Devon Sova, William Robison, Doug Draime , R.F. Jordan, Corey Cook, Richard King Perkins II , Bruce Matteson, Michael Lee Johnson, Janet Kuypers, Jenene Ravesloot, Daniel S. Weinberg, Lennart Lundh, Derrick Sherwin, Fritz Hamilton, Ronald M. Wade, Robert D. Lyons, Brian Duggan, John Duncklee, Stephen V. Ramey, Christine Barba, Yasmin Ramirez, Wm. Samuel Bradford, and Joshua Copeland, and artwork by Uzeyir Lokman CAYCI, Brian Forres, Aaron Wilder, Eric Bonholtzer, Edward Michael O'Durr Supranowicz, Henry Walter Matthews, Rose E. Grier, Oz Hardwick, Cheryl Townsend, Peter LaBerge, David Michael Jackson, and the HA!man of South Africa.