THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER's Books & More Shop: Books on Death and Grief: The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky

The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky
enlarge	Author: Ellen Meloy Publisher: Vintage Category: Book List Price: ~~$14.95~~ Buy Used: $3.98 as of 11/21/2009 16:40 PST details You Save: $10.97 (73%) New (22) Used (27) from $3.98 Seller: happyhourcollectables Media: Paperback Edition: Later printing Pages: 336 Number Of Items: 1 Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5 Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 ISBN: 0375708138 Dewey Decimal Number: 917.90433 EAN: 9780375708138 ASIN: 0375708138 Publication Date: July 8, 2003 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days


Similar Items: Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild Raven's Exile: A Season on the Green River The Last Cheater's Waltz: Beauty and Violence in the Desert Southwest The Secret Knowledge of Water : Discovering the Essence of the American Desert The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit


Editorial Reviews: Product Description In this invigorating mix of natural history and adventure, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy uses turquoise—the color and the gem—to probe deeper into our profound human attachment to landscape. From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and deep canyons of the Southwest, we journey with Meloy through vistas of both great beauty and great desecration. Her keen vision makes us look anew at ancestral mountains, turquoise seas, and even motel swimming pools. She introduces us to Navajo “velvet grandmothers” whose attire and aesthetics absorb the vivid palette of their homeland, as well as to Persians who consider turquoise the life-saving equivalent of a bullet-proof vest. Throughout, Meloy invites us to appreciate along with her the endless surprises in all of life and celebrates the seduction to be found in our visual surroundings.

Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 9 1 2 Next » Amazement as the highest goal August 17, 2009 A. L. Roth Ellen Meloy quotes Goethe, "The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement." The Anthropology of Turquoise leaves the reader amazed, by her rich and vivid prose, and by how it urges us to engage the natural world around us with fresh, hungry senses. Meloy decries American's "entrenched national resistance to anything the least bit inconvenient or uncomfortable," but her emphasis, overall, is affirmation not critique. So she describes our brains as a "three-pound mass of neurons wired for an organic, sensory relationship to place... We are blood-tied to landscape by the language of cells. Although we may be hell-bent for metaphysical starvation, trying with all our might to surrender our sensory intelligence to technology and massive artifice, it will take time for these million-years-old senses to atrophy, to go the way of our tail, devolved to a bony nub. In the meantime here we are staggering about the diminishing wilds, greedy to feed those ossifying lobes with light." Anthropology of Turquoise takes its place, along with her final book, Eating Stone, among my very most favorite books of all time At times almost poetical May 24, 2009 Ceres (Hawaii) I stumbled on this book during one of those periods in which I become overwhelmed by an urge to go and sit in the desert. Such feelings come to me from time to time. Unfortunately this wasn't practical at the time so I sought to satisfy my longing vicariously. Hence my browsing Amazon and my discovery of this book. Prior to that time I had never heard of the author or her book. It's difficult to categorize this book. The best that I can do is describe it. It is a collection of essays in which the author muses about various geologies, mostly the southwest, her feelings about the outdoors and her relationship with color. But there are many, many digressions including such subjects as her personal history and the social/political nature of Utah. For the most part I found these digressions enjoyable. Like others have commented I found many passages in which her prose is almost poetical. There are sentences, paragraphs and whole pages that one is tempted to read out loud to anyone who would care to listen. But there are also times that the flights of fancy become a little bit too personal, a little bit too abstruse. It is for this reason that I give it only four stars. Having said that I would still recommend this book. It is best read when one is in a quiet frame of mind, with no expectation of plot or narrative. As such it fulfilled my desire to go and sit in the desert without leaving home. And I came to appreciate the author's approach to life, her love of nature, her love of being alone and her sometimes irreverent habit of contrasting the lyricism of the desert with the more humorous and profane aspects of life. Doing so only helps one appreciate to totality of life. At times I found myself wondering why anyone would feel compelled to write such a book. I'm sure the author would reply that a writer writes because she has to. Writing is an indispensable part of the author's life. A life that the reader comes to share. Perhaps this is why, when I discovered half way through the book that the author had died unexpectedly in 2004 at the age of 58, that I felt a pain inside. I'll probably read another book by Ellen Meloy. Hopefully while sitting on a mesa somewhere. With no expectations. As Beautifully written as the color February 9, 2009 Lori L. Owens (Henderson, NV USA) This lyrical, beautifully written book shows the author's love for not only the desert regions of the Southwest, but also for the color turquoise, the color of our skies and the color of the stone lovingly set in the jewelry that defines the region. You will learn to appreciate tiny details about living in the desert, and you will come to see the land and its beauty through a new light, colored, of course, by shades of turquoise. Enjoy! a sense of the southwest January 9, 2009 No one writes the feel of the southest like Ellen Meloy. Reading her is second only to being there. a painter's take on life and light December 7, 2008 Matt Hill (Santa Cruz Mountains, Ca) Ellen Meloy was on her way to major recognition as a memoir and adventure writer when her life was cut short at age 58. This book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but may not have gotten the votes because of the unevenness of these personal narrations. THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF TURQUOISE is a loose linkage of personal essays, some might say memoir. There is very little on the subject of turquoise running through these writings however; it is a very tenuous theme at best. Meloy's sharp but undeveloped sense of humor gets the reader wondering where the words are headed sometimes. "Swimming in Mohave" is the best of the essays I would venture. In "Angry Lunch Cafe" however, the writing is reduced to tangential ravings that are pretty disorienting. The writing gets too witty, too expansive at times, almost like she's trying to fuse Terry Tempest Williams with Edward Abbey. It's not easy on the reader when certain passages have to be reread several times and still the meaning is elusive. There is an obsession with hyphenation that feels all wrong too. Meloy, who is primarily an artist, works the prose like it's a pastiche of elements, almost as if she's actually painting and not writing about painting. You can sense her striving for some real poetic prose, but some of the verbiage that results leaves too much head scratching. Yet, having said all that, her musings are solid, conveying a distinct sense of her life in the southern Utah desert and other locales. Ellen Meloy has left us with evocative descriptions of the life and terrains that filled her with love and passion. Parataxis The Cloud Reckoner Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts Showing reviews 1-5 of 9 1 2 Next »

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