A Surprising Debut Novel. The Way Of Birds. Etherial Music

Chuck Collins – Alter To An Erupting Sun

Altar to an Erupting Sun is a near-future story of one community facing climate disruption in the critical decade ahead. Rae Kelliher is a veteran environmental activist and pioneer in the death-with-dignity movement. Facing a diagnosis of terminal illness, she engages in a shocking suicide murder, taking the life of an oil company CEO for his role in delaying responses to climate disruption. Seven years later, Rae’s friends and family gather at her Vermont farm community to try to understand her violent exit and the rapid social transformations around them. Altar to an Erupting Sun focuses attention on the decades-long culpability of the fossil fuel industry in funding denial movements, blocking change. and locking us on course to an uninhabitable earth. Altar lifts up the history of several important movements over the last forty years including the grassroots anti-nuclear power, Central America solidarity, and effort to shut down the School of Americas. Rae Kelliher, the lead character in the story, is also part of anti-eviction movements in Boston and efforts to stop construction of a fracked gas pipeline. Collins also depicts real time tactical debates among climate change activists about direct action, destruction of property, and how to focus attention on the leaders of the fossil fuel industry.

Jennifer Ackerman – The Bird Way: A New Look At How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent and Think

“There is the mammal way and there is the bird way.” But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries –– What they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own: deception, manipulation, cheating, kidnapping, infanticide, but also ingenious communication between species, cooperation, collaboration, altruism, culture, and play. Drawing on personal observations, the latest science, and her bird-related travel around the world, from the tropical rainforests of eastern Australia and the remote woodlands of northern Japan to the rolling hills of Lower Austria and the islands of Alaska’s Kachemak Bay, Jennifer Ackerman shows there is clearly no single bird way of being. In every respect, in plumage, form, song, flight, lifestyle, niche, and behavior, birds vary.

TLK – A Signal To The Living

Bristol-based producer and vocalist TLK’s says her Primed For Loss EP explores the nuance of maternal loss in early childhood. Her music stretches the thin fabric of selfhood, leaning deeply into the ethereal realm. Fluid in genre and form, and emphasising improvisation as a core tenet for psychological processing, the enchanting sound of TLK is permeating the Bristol scene.