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Do you hear them? The witches that whisper in the woods. Do you see them? The birds that gather on the top of the church. Do you taste them? The fruit that lies in her womb. Do you smell them? The smoke tendrils that rise from smoldering ash. Can you touch them? The omens that make up your future. In this poetry collection, Trista Edwards weaves readers through elaborate images-some of terror, some of beauty-that transfix on the things that warn of an entire realm beyond physical sight. Through palm reading, incantations in the night, the blending of body with earth and the ethereal, Spectral Evidence serves as a medium through which one can be delivered, a roadmap to the other side, the guide that lays out connections between where the soul resides now and where the soul will one day make its home.

Sex magic, hurricanes, leviathans, anti-romcoms, overly-realistic dreams, doll-written novels, talking bodega cats: FLAPPERHOUSE #18

"This study...questions the female voice in poetry and its connection to sexuality-- specifically the relationship of sex and language"--Leaf iii.

Spectral Evidence is a collection of poems that instigates a variety of omens, signs, divinations, and folktales to explore the concept of wish fulfillment. They arise in obedience to the compulsion to repeat past dramas brought on by failed love, the nostalgia of childhood, the damning legacy of language, the restriction of gender roles, death, etc. In order to quell these anxieties, the speaker looks beyond the self to both history and mythology, often invented mythologies as an attempt to control or recast the story-to give shape to the obscurities of life by creating a system of belief in order to forge meaning or confuse oneself into believing. In many ways this collection is all about belief or in wanting to believe. Through language, God is written into existence. God is the name of the blanket we put over the mystery to give it shape. Here, in this collection, God is an ant's egg. a cherry pit, a colony of white moths, a severed hand, the color red, a little bird. This collection explores these vehicles of meaning, the words that provide the shell of meaning, and the power of invention in hopes to gain control over what is deemed uncontrollable. While the speaker may be casting omens as "pre-ordained" entities outside of her power, it is her convictions in these signs that her own psychological and associative link between their meaning and their appearance that she conjures and creates because the existing systems of language, religion, and belief do not serve her. This creation is what is powerful. It is healing. It is birth. It is not involuntary wish fulfillment. It is the deliberative satisfaction of desire-on of the most insurrectionary acts a woman can execute.

Herbst Department Store held sway on Fargo's Broadway for nearly 90 years. In 1887, a young merchant named Isaac Herbst came to Fargo to seek his fortune. He proved to be a dynamic salesman, and by 1892 he had founded Herbst Department Store. The business was destroyed a year later in the Great Fire of 1893, which wiped out most of downtown. Isaac rebuilt his business and expanded it until his death in 1910. The department store was continued by his widow, sons, grandsons, and a large group of loyal employees. The Herbst family took great pride in the community and was active in civic affairs. In the 1970s and 1980s, many customers abandoned downtown Fargo for West Acres Shopping Center and other large retail chains. Herbst was the last large department store remaining downtown until it closed in 1982. Images of America: Herbst Department Store shines a light on a business that had a great impact on Fargo's vibrant downtown and community.

Walking is the most popular physical activity reported by adults, and the benefits of walking are well documented in the literature (Fox & Hillsdon, 2007). Walkability refers to the friendliness of neighbourhood characteristics the enables pedestrian walking (Grant, Edwards, Sveistrup, Andrew, & Egan, 2010). A well-known and validated perceived walkability scale, the "Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale" (NEWS; Saelens, Sallis, Black, et al., 2003) was developed in San Diego, California. Several adapted versions of the NEWS have been previously constructed for continued use in warm climates; however, adaptations of the NEWS for climates with winter walkability have not been developed. The main objective of this dissertation was to adapt the NEWS for colder climates and to assess the reliability and validity of the adapted measure, the NEWS-North, by conducting three studies. The first study consisted of two phases. For the first phase, three focus groups reviewed the NEWS questionnaire in a Canadian context and provided feedback on how to adapt the NEWS for use in Canada and other northern climates. The inclusion of a winter walkability section as well as the removal of American spellings and measurements were among some of the suggestions from the focus groups. An initial draft of the NEWS-North was created based on the results from the focus group. For the second phase, this initial draft was sent to a panel of walkability experts to assess content validation. All of the nine subscales were evaluated as highly important during the content validation. In addition, the experts renamed several section titles to improve precision. In the second study and third study, data from an online pilot test in Ottawa, Canada of the NEWS-North was used. The validity based on the internal structure of the questionnaire (i.e., factorial validity) and reliability (i.e., and internal consistency and test-retest reliability) of the NEWS-North was examined in Study Two. In this study, only subscales with the same Likert scale were examined (i.e., seven subscales) following the instructions of the adaptation protocol. Our results suggested a 7-factor model structure based on a multilevel exploratory factor analyses (MEFA). In addition, the 7-factor MEFA model had good test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.85 to 0.93) as well as adequate internal consistency (? = 0.53 to 0.75). In Study Three, the same seven subscales identified by the MEFA were included. In this study, a two-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) with spatial dependency analyses was used to examine the convergent validity in the NEWS-North across 64 Ottawa neighbourhoods. The HLM analyses examined each subscale of the NEWS-North with and without any control variables. More specifically, they determined how each subscale of the NEWS-North predicted walking behaviour in the last two weeks at each level. The individual level (Level One) was comprised of the seven subscales of the NEWS-North from self-reported data along with three control variables (i.e., dog ownership, season, and gender). The neighbourhood level (Level Two) was comprised of the six equivalent subscales measured objectively with one control variable. At the time of this study, unfortunately, an equivalent winter subscale was not available at the neighbourhood level. At the individual level without any control variables, only the sidewalk subscale was a marginally significant predictor of walking. However, the sidewalk subscale reached significance while controlling for dog ownership, season, and gender. At the neighbourhood level without controlling for resident median income after tax, two NEWS-North equivalent subscales were found to predict walking behaviours. The sidewalk subscale was marginally significant and the land-use access subscale (via Franks walkability index Frank et al., 2010) was significant. While controlling for neighbourhood resident median income after- tax, both the land-use access subscale and sidewalk subscale were significant predictors of walking over the past two weeks. Overall, this dissertation supports the development for a perceived walkability questionnaire for seasonal climates. In addition, the preliminary results overall provide initial evidence for the reliability and validity of the NEWS-North. Overall implications, limitations, and future applied uses of the NEWS-North are discussed.