John Lane

On a placid Blue Ridge mountain lake on Labor Day Weekend in 1935, three locals sightseeing in an overloaded boat drown, and the cotton mill scion who owns the lake is indicted for their murders. Decades later Ben Crocker - witness to and reluctant participant in the aftermath of this long-forgotten tragedy - is drawn once more into the morally ambiguous world of mill fortunes and foothills justice.The son of mill workers in Carlton, South Carolina, Crocker is caught between competing loyalties to his family and future. Crocker wanted more than a rough-hewn life on a factory floor, so he studied accounting at the local textile institute and was hired as bookkeeper to the owner, George McCane, a man as burdened by his familial ties as Crocker and even less prepared for the authority of his mantel.McCane’s decision to renovate the Carlton Mill and lay off families connected to the Uprising of ’34, one of the largest labor strikes in U.S. history, puts Crocker in the ill-fitting position as his boss’s enforcer. Days after the evictions, the surprise indictment lands McCane in a North Carolina mountain jail and sinks Crocker even deeper into the escalating tensions between mill workers and the owners.While traversing mountain communities in McCane’s defense, Crocker must also manage the forced renovation of the Carlton Mill, negotiate with labor organizers led by local hero Olin Campbell, collaborate with McCane’s besotted brother, Angus, and fend off his father’s and wife’s skepticism of his own social aspirations. Hanging distractingly over Crocker’s upended life is his burgeoning infatuation with Novie Moreland - the young widow of one of those McCane is accused of killing. Though unrequited, Croker’s relationship with Novie proves to be a beacon of hope amid the shadows of political and social machinations in the darkest chapter in his long life.As the union retaliates and the McCane murder trial is settled, it is uncertain who the winners and losers have been in this generational clash of workers and owners, labor and capital, those tied to the land and its people and those who exploit both. When Crocker looks back from 1988 at these two crucial years in his life in the mid-1930s, he is left to wonder if he did right by himself and those closest to him. Against all better judgment, Crocker knows he must seek out Novie Moreland once more if he is ever to find closure with the past.

Rediscover the enchanting world of Anatole France's "Honey-Bee," a timeless fairy tale originally published in 1911. This classic children's story transports readers to a realm of magic and fantasy, where dwarfs and other fantastical creatures come to life. "Honey-Bee" explores themes central to juvenile fiction, weaving a captivating narrative perfect for young imaginations. A treasured example of fairy tales and folklore, this book is a delightful adventure that captures the spirit of childhood wonder. Readers interested in stories featuring animals and magical elements will be captivated by its charm. This meticulously prepared print edition ensures the enduring appeal of Anatole France's work continues to resonate.This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

While scouting sites for geology field trips, poet and naturalist John Lane encountered deep gullies created between the Civil War and the 1930s contributed to by his mother’s tenant farming family and their rural neighbors in Piedmont South Carolina. This brush with the poor farming practices of the past leads Lane into an exploration of his own family’s complicated history and of the larger environmental forces that have shaped the region where he chooses to live. With his sister as guide, Lane descends into the gully of his own childhood to uncover memories of a loving but alcoholic mother and a suicidal father. Back and forth, the narrative progresses from depictions of the land—particularly the overgrown and neglected places that hold stories and mysteries of the region—to Lane’s ever-deepening search.He wonders how he, a college professor and husband settled into middle-class life, has emerged from the chaos of his family’s past. Along the way, we meet heroic Depression-era geologists, fascinating colleagues, and troubled ancestors. Lane’s extraordinary ability to weave personal history together with explorations of the natural world will remind readers of the works of Loren Eiseley and Terry Tempest Williams.

John Lane continues his exploration of the intersection of the human imagination with the world of other animals in a companion volume to Coyote Settles the South (2016) and Neighbourhood Hawks (2019). Each of these fifteen pieces--some more formal essays, some journalism, and some stories of Lane's encounters with wild animals in wild places--explores the diversity and the mystery of what's often been called ""the more than human world."" In each piece there is always animal presence, sometimes central and sometimes peripheral. In one piece the Columbian mammoth comes back to trouble the contemporary political landscape of South Carolina. In another, he ponders the fate of a wing-shot goose finding a last refuge in the Lane family's tiny frog pond. In another, Lane ventures into an abandoned Zimbabwean gold mine alone to check on the status of a common genet, a shy carnivore.

When John Lane was a young poet, a magazine editor asked him to leave the comfortable eddy of verse and contemplate in paragraphs why he was a kayaker. The resulting essay, ""Why I Love Falling Water,"" began what would become a thirty-five-year stream of published poetry and prose about rivers and river people. Gathered here after decades, scattered individually throughout a dozen published books and many magazines, newspapers, and journals, are essays and poems about paddling and floating rivers all over the Southeast and beyond. Settings range from the Nantahala in North Carolina to the Tiburon in Mexico. This collection encompasses all John Lane's river writing outside his two book-length narratives Chattooga: Descending into the Deliverance River and My Paddle to the Sea: Eleven Days in the River of the Carolinas. Put in anywhere among this wealth of literary reflection and insight and you won't be disappointed.

First published in 1992. Aluminium is a relatively new material, first used on a commercial basis just over 100 years ago. Today it has taken its place alongside other traditional materials as an established building element. In this variable reference source, John Lane discusses the history and development of aluminium usage in the building industry. Its characteristics of strength, lightness and durability, coupled with easy formability, make it and ideal medium for this market. The first section of this book is a general discussion of the metal, covering such areas as its properties, alloys, fabrication, joining and finishing. The second part details the aspects of aluminium which are of particular importance in construction, while the final section highlights some of its major uses in architecture and building. The text is amply illustrated with diagrams and photographs, and the appendices provide the reader with comprehensive details of relevant standards and contact addresses.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We have represented this book in the same form as it was first published. Hence any marks seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

After reading J. A. Baker’s fifty-year-old British nature classic The Peregrine, John Lane found himself an ocean away, stalking resident red-shouldered hawks in his neighborhood in Spartanburg, South Carolina. What he observed was very different from what Baker deduced from a decade of chronicling the lives of those brooding migratory raptors. Baker imagined a species on the brink of extinction because of the use of agricultural chemicals on European farms. A half century later in America, Lane found the red-shouldered hawks to be a stable Anthropocene species adapted to life along the waterways of a suburban nation.Lane watched the hawks for a full year and along the way made a pledge to himself: Anytime he heard or saw the noisy, nonmigratory hawks in his neighborhood, he would drop whatever he was doing and follow them on foot, on bike, or in his truck. The almanac that results from this discipline considers many questions any practiced amateur naturalist would ask, such as where and when will the hawks nest, what do they eat, what are their greatest threats, and what exactly are they communicating through those constant multinoted cries? Lane’s year following the hawks also led him to try to answer what would become the most complex question of all: why his heart, like Baker’s, goes out so fully to wild things.

One night, poet and environmental writer John Lane tuned in to a sound from behind his house that he had never heard before: the nearby eerie and captivating howls of coyotes. Since this was Spartanburg, South Carolina, and not Missoula, Montana, Lane set out to discover all he could about his new and unexpected neighbors.Coyote Settles the South is the story of his journey through the Southeast, as he visits coyote territories: swamps, nature preserves, old farm fields, suburbs, a tannery, and even city streets. On his travels he meets, interrogates, and observes those who interact with the animals—trappers, wildlife researchers, hunters, rattled pet owners, and even one devoted coyote hugger. Along the way, he encounters sensible, yet sometimes perplexing, insight concerning the migration into the Southeast of the American coyote, an animal that, in the end, surprises him with its intelligence, resilience, and amazing adaptability.

First published in 1992. Aluminium is a relatively new material, first used on a commercial basis just over 100 years ago. Today it has taken its place alongside other traditional materials as an established building element. In this variable reference source, John Lane discusses the history and development of aluminium usage in the building industry. Its characteristics of strength, lightness and durability, coupled with easy formability, make it and ideal medium for this market. The first section of this book is a general discussion of the metal, covering such areas as its properties, alloys, fabrication, joining and finishing. The second part details the aspects of aluminium which are of particular importance in construction, while the final section highlights some of its major uses in architecture and building. The text is amply illustrated with diagrams and photographs, and the appendices provide the reader with comprehensive details of relevant standards and contact addresses.

In the story of the earth, geologists tell us that around 12,000 years ago the planet shifted from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. There probably were poets to sing about that change, but of what they sang, we have no records. Even earlier, paintings on cave walls point toward an artistic response from our upstart species. These early artists painted the Pleistocene’s last great ice age herds thundering past. Now John Lane’s traveling geologist sings a dawning epoch’s blues. The Anthropocene is upon us, and his poems show how humans believe they have become “the planet’s boss, the big chief, the emperor of air, diesel fuel,/bow thrusters, and tax shelters…” And if you don’t believe the times are changing, consider these poems-full of dead-on-the-road groundhogs and radial tires, carbon-spewing adventure travel, masturbating parrots, and mounds and mounds of garbage-as twenty-first-century objective correlatives John Keats might recognize. But all is not collapse out there. The puny human voice William Faulkner praised in his Nobel acceptance speech sings amidst the 6th Great Extinction. These lyrics and narratives deposit the pleasures of contemporary poetry in the carbon record.

One night, poet and environmental writer John Lane tuned in to a sound from behind his house that he had never heard before: the nearby eerie and captivating howls of coyotes. Since this was Spartanburg, South Carolina, and not Missoula, Montana, Lane set out to discover all he could about his new and unexpected neighbors.Coyote Settles the South is the story of his journey through the Southeast, as he visits coyote territories: swamps, nature preserves, old farm fields, suburbs, a tannery, and even city streets. On his travels he meets, interrogates, and observes those who interact with the animals—trappers, wildlife researchers, hunters, rattled pet owners, and even one devoted coyote hugger. Along the way, he encounters sensible, yet sometimes perplexing, insight concerning the migration into the Southeast of the American coyote, an animal that, in the end, surprises him with its intelligence, resilience, and amazing adaptability.

Why do writers love dogs? Not always for the same reasons all the rest of us do. Dorothea Benton Frank's dog Henry teaches her about self-righteous indignation every time she leaves on a book tour. Ron Rash learns to appreciate his misanthropic mutt Pepper after he bites his daughter's suitor. For Tommy Hays the dog is something not even a psychic can separate from the family. For some writers, such as Mary Alice Monroe, a Bernese Mountain dog arrives via Swiss Air. For George Singleton, they just wander into his Pickens County yard. The connection between dogs and humans in the geographic region known as South Carolina goes back over 10,000 years. There's even a wild dog in the Lowcountry known as the Carolina Dog, whose ancestors may have accompanied the first Americans across the Bering ice bridge. In Literary Dogs & Their South Carolina Writers twenty-five of the Palmetto State's most beloved authors introduce you to their most memorable dogs. There is Padgett Powell's "Ode to Spode," Josephine Humphreys' paean to a poodle, and Roger Pinckney’s Daufuskie Dog-ageddon. Meet Marshall Chapman's Impy, Mindy Friddle's Otto, Beth Webb Hart's Bo Peep, and more. From bird dogs to bad dogs, wild dogs to café dogs, get to know these canines and their literary companions.

Begin with Rock, End with Water is John Lane’s third collection of essays. In this new gathering of seventeen narrative essays Lane pushes even deeper into a twenty-year lyrical consideration of his place (and the place of all of us) in the changing natural world. Though there are many themes and settings in this collection, rivers such as the Chattooga, Youghigheny, Dead, Reedy, Micos, Yuribamba, and Tallahatchie figure prominently in Lane’s understanding of place and culture.